  We propose a quantum annealing protocol that more effectively probes the
dynamics of a single qubit on D-Wave's quantum annealing hardware. This
protocol uses D-Wave's h-gain schedule functionality, which allows the rapid
quenching of the longitudinal magnetic field at arbitrary points during the
anneal. This features enables us to distinguish between open and closed system
dynamics as well as the presence or absence of longitudinal magnetic field
noise. We show that both thermal and magnetic field fluctuations are key
sources of noise that need to be included in an open quantum system model to
reproduce the output statistics of the hardware.
