Adiabatic evolution under quantum control Original Research Article

One difficulty with adiabatic quantum computation is the limit on the computation time. Here we propose two schemes to speed-up the adiabatic evolution. To apply this controlled adiabatic evolution to adiabatic quantum computation, we design one of the schemes without any explicit knowledge of the instantaneous eigenstates of the final Hamiltonian. Whereas in another scheme, we assume that the ground state of the Hamiltonian is known, and this information can be used to design the control. By these techniques, a linear speed-up proportional to the nonlinearity can be predicted. As an illustration, we study a two-level system driven by a time-dependent magnetic field under the control. The problem of finding an item in an unsorted database by adiabatic evolution is also examined. The physics behind the control scheme is interpreted.