Quantum adiabatic theorem for unbounded Hamiltonians, with applications to superconducting circuits

We present a new quantum adiabatic theorem that allows one to rigorously bound the adiabatic timescale for a variety of systems, including those described by unbounded Hamiltonians. Our bound is geared towards the qubit approximation of superconducting circuits, and presents a sufficient condition for remaining within the 2n-dimensional qubit subspace of a circuit model of n qubits. The novelty of this adiabatic theorem is that unlike previous rigorous results, it does not contain 2n as a factor in the adiabatic timescale, and it allows one to obtain an expression for the adiabatic timescale independent of the cutoff of the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space of the circuit Hamiltonian. As an application, we present an explicit dependence of this timescale on circuit parameters for a superconducting flux qubit, and demonstrate that leakage out of the qubit subspace is inevitable as the tunneling barrier is raised towards the end of a quantum anneal. We also discuss a method of obtaining a 2n×2n effective Hamiltonian that best approximates the true dynamics induced by slowly changing circuit control parameters.