  Currently, existing quantum annealers have proven themselves as viable
technology for the first practical applications in the
noisy-intermediate-scale-quantum era. However, to fully exploit their
capabilities, a comprehensive characterization of their finite-time excitations
is instrumental. To this end, we develop a phase diagram for driven Ising
chains, from which the scaling behavior of the excess work can be read off as a
function of process duration and system size. "Fast" processes are well
described by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism; "slow" processes are governed by
effective Landau-Zener dynamics; and "very slow" processes can be approximated
with adiabatic perturbation theory.
