1. Introduction
Beam search is a heuristic search algorithm that is an optimization of best-first search that reduces its memory requirement. Best-first search is a graph search which orders all partial solutions (states) according to some heuristic which attempts to predict how close a partial solution is to a complete solution (goal state). In beam search, only a predetermined number of best partial solutions are kept as candidates.
2. Example
A basic form of local search
Hill-climbing algorithm is another example of local beam search
3. Conclusion
Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_search