Role of single-qubit decoherence time in adiabatic quantum computation

We have studied numerically the evolution of an adiabatic quantum computer in the presence of a Markovian Ohmic environment by considering Ising spin-glass systems with up to 20 qubits independently coupled to this environment via two conjugate degrees of freedom. The required computation time is demonstrated to be of the same order as that for an isolated system and is not limited by the single-qubit decoherence time T₂^∗, even when the minimum gap is much smaller than the temperature and decoherence-induced level broadening. For small minimum gap, the system can be described by an effective two-state model coupled only longitudinally to environment.