Adiabatic theorem in the presence of noise

We provide rigorous bounds for the error of the adiabatic approximation of quantum mechanics under four sources of experimental error: perturbations in the initial condition, systematic time-dependent perturbations in the Hamiltonian, coupling to low-energy quantum systems, and decoherent time-dependent perturbations in the Hamiltonian. For decoherent perturbations, we find both upper and lower bounds on the evolution time to guarantee that the adiabatic approximation performs within a prescribed tolerance. Our results include explicit definitions of constants, and we apply them to the spin-1/2 particle in a rotating magnetic field and to the superconducting flux qubit. We compare the theoretical bounds on the superconducting flux qubit to simulation results.