High-Fidelity Transmon Reset with a Multimode Acoustic Resonator

Achieving sufficiently low residual excited-state populations remains a key challenge in superconducting quantum circuits, particularly for protocols operating close to noise limits or requiring repeated qubit initialization. Existing protocols primarily address this challenge through sophisticated control, engineered dissipation, or feedback mechanisms. Here, we demonstrate an alternative approach in which a superconducting qubit is reset using a physically distinct, intrinsically colder phononic bath. Specifically, we interface a transmon with a high-overtone bulk acoustic resonator (HBAR), enabling cooling of the qubit into GHz-frequency modes. Using this approach, we achieve a residual excited-state population of the qubit below 10−4, representing an improvement of one to two orders of magnitude compared to existing reset schemes. These results highlight the potential of phononic baths as a resource for high-fidelity qubit initialization in superconducting circuits.