We consider the effects of decoherence on Landau-Zener crossings encountered in a large-scale adiabatic-quantum-computing setup. We analyze the dependence of the success probability—i.e., the probability for the system to end up in its new ground state—on the noise amplitude and correlation time. We determine the optimal sweep rate that is required to maximize the success probability. We then discuss the scaling of decoherence effects with increasing system size. We find that those effects can be important for large systems, even if they are small for each of the small building blocks.

• Received 4 September 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.74.052330