  New annealing schedules for quantum annealing are proposed based on the
adiabatic theorem. These schedules exhibit faster decrease of the excitation
probability than a linear schedule. To derive this conclusion, the asymptotic
form of the excitation probability for quantum annealing is explicitly obtained
in the limit of long annealing time. Its first-order term, which is inversely
proportional to the square of the annealing time, is shown to be determined
only by the information at the initial and final times. Our annealing schedules
make it possible to drop this term, thus leading to a higher order (smaller)
excitation probability. We verify these results by solving numerically the
time-dependent Schrodinger equation for small size systems
