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.
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