{
  "abstract": "We consider the distribution of domain walls arising in ground states of frustrated 1-dimensional Ising spin chains with anti-parallel boundary spins. For ideal chains, a sine-squared particle-in-a-box distribution of domain walls is expected in the quantum setting, and a uniform distribution expected classically. However, for chains with random imperfections, prior work [Chancellor et al., npj Quantum Inf. 8, 73, 2022] found that the distribution in a physical implementation corresponded to neither. Instead, the domain wall distribution forms a U-shaped profile arising from a classical model with random fields, where the combination of averaging over these fields and thermal averaging produces the characteristic U-shape. With D-Wave's newer fast anneal feature, we access anneal times shorter than the coherence time and observe the expected coherent quantum behavior in the form of a sine-squared distribution. For the shortest available anneal time, the dynamics have not yet reached the sine-squared shape and instead display a different U-shape in the middle of the chains. This motivates using the extent of the domain wall distribution tail in this regime as a platform independent metric that provides a signature of both coherence time and noise levels.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.40504",
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Shushmi Chowdhury"
    },
    {
      "name": "Asa Hopkins"
    },
    {
      "name": "Nick Chancellor"
    },
    {
      "name": "Viv Kendon"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/779pds832svyh.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.40504",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "779pds832svyh",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.40504",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "quant-ph"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.40504",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-29",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/779pds832svyh.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:36:28Z",
      "native_id": "2610.40504",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.40504"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:quant-ph",
      "subfield": "quantum"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Using domain walls to benchmark fast quantum anneals",
  "title_text": "Using domain walls to benchmark fast quantum anneals",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-01T12:20:47Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/779pds832svyh",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}