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.

Circuit quantum acoustodynamics (cQAD) devices have a wide range of applications in quantum science, all of which depend crucially on the quantum coherence of the mechanical subsystem. In this context, high-overtone bulk acoustic-wave resonators (HBARs) are particularly promising, since they have shown very high quality factors with negligible dephasing. However, the introduction of piezoelectric films, which are necessary for coupling to a superconducting circuit, can lead to additional loss channels, such as surface scattering and two-level systems. Here, we study the acoustic dissipation of HBAR resonators in cQAD systems and find that the defect density of the piezoelectric material and its interface with the bulk are limiting factors for the coherence. We measure acoustic modes with phonon lifetimes up to 400 μs and lifetime-limited coherence times approaching 1 ms in the quantum regime. When coupled to a superconducting qubit, this leads to a hybrid system with a large quantum coherence cooperativity of C_{T_{2}}=1.1×10^{5}. These results represent a new milestone for the performance of cQAD devices and offer concrete paths forward for further improvements.

Quantum correlations are essential for achieving quantum advantage in computing, communication and sensing. Moreover, their observation challenges and constrains our fundamental understanding of nature. Mechanical oscillators in the quantum regime provide an appealing platform for preparing and investigating quantum correlations at macroscopic scales. Despite substantial progress, however, continuous-variable quantum correlations stronger than entanglement have not yet been observed in this macroscopic regime. Here, we report the experimental observation of continuous-variable Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations between two spatially-separated mechanical oscillators with an effective mass of $\sim 16 \,μg$ each. This is achieved by coupling them to a superconducting qubit which allows for engineering a two-mode squeezing interaction when parametrically driven. Crucially, we show that this interaction can be used to witness quantum correlations through the realization of a mechanical SU(1,1) interferometer. Our results expand the toolbox of operations in circuit quantum acoustodynamics and demonstrate that quantum correlations stronger than entanglement can also be observed in macroscopic systems, thereby shedding light on the boundary between quantum and classical regimes.

Hybrid quantum systems combine the advantages of different physical platforms with the goal of realizing more powerful quantum information processing devices. Mechanical systems, such as bulk acoustic wave resonators, feature many highly coherent harmonic modes in a compact footprint, complementing the strong nonlinearities and fast operation of superconducting quantum circuits. We developed an architecture for mechanical resonator-based quantum computing in which a superconducting qubit is used to perform quantum gates on a collection of mechanical modes. We demonstrate a universal gate set composed of single-qubit gates and controlled arbitrary-phase gates and showcase their use in the quantum Fourier transform and period-finding algorithms. These results show the potential of using mechanical systems to build crucial components for quantum technologies, such as quantum random-access memories.

Initialization of mechanical modes in the quantum ground state is crucial for their use in quantum information and quantum sensing protocols. In quantum processors, impurity of the modes' initial state affects the infidelity of subsequent quantum algorithms. In quantum sensors, excitations out of the ground state contribute to the noise of the detector, and their prevalence puts a bound on rare events that deposit energy into the mechanical modes. In this Letter, we measure the excited-state populations of GHz-frequency modes in a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator. We find that the population of the first excited state can be as low as P_{p}=(1.2±5.5)×10^{-5}, corresponding to an effective temperature of 25.2 mK, which are upper bounds limited by imperfections in the measurement process. These results compare favorably to the lowest populations measured in superconducting circuits. Finally, we use the measured populations to constrain the amplitude of high-frequency gravitational waves, the kinetic mixing strength of ultralight dark matter, and nonlinear modifications of the Schrödinger equation describing wave function collapse mechanisms. Our Letter establishes high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonators as a versatile resource for quantum state initialization and studies of fundamental physics.

We present an approach for demonstrating acoustic manipulation and optical readout of silicon-vacancy (SiV) spin qubits embedded in a diamond high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator (HBAR). This then allows us to couple the SiV to other quantum systems, such as superconducting circuits, and use it as a quantum memory.

We demonstrate high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonators (HBARs) in diamond with an integrated piezoelectric transducer and quality factors of over $5\times 10^{5}$. Optimized phononic modes could allow for the demonstration of SiV-phonon coupling through modulation of the SiV's optical transitions or direct coupling to its spin degree of freedom.

Fock states of the quantum harmonic oscillator are fundamental to quantum sensing and information processing, serving as key resources for exploiting bosonic degrees of freedom. Here, we prepare high Fock states in a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator by coupling it to a superconducting qubit and applying microwave pulses designed using quantum optimal control. We characterize the experimentally realized states by employing a criterion for genuine quantum non-Gaussianity (QNG) designed to reveal multiphonon contributions. Although energy relaxation and decoherence limit the achievable fidelities, we demonstrate genuine QNG features compatible with a Fock state |6⟩, confirming that the prepared states cannot be generated through Gaussian operations on states with up to Fock state |5⟩ contributions. We further investigate the robustness of these QNG features to losses and their utility in sensing displacement amplitudes. In particular, we introduce a hierarchy based on the quantum Fisher information and show that, despite decoherence and measurement imperfections, the prepared states achieve a displacement sensitivity surpassing that of an ideal Fock state |3⟩. Our results have immediate applications in quantum sensing and simulations with high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator devices.

The performance of superconducting microwave circuits is strongly influenced by the material properties of the superconducting film and substrate. While progress has been made in understanding the importance of surface preparation and the effect of surface oxides, the complex effect of superconductor film structure on microwave losses is not yet fully understood. In this study, we investigate the microwave properties of niobium resonators with different crystalline properties and related surface topographies. We analyze a series of magnetron sputtered films in which the Nb crystal orientation and surface topography are changed by varying the substrate temperatures between room temperature and 975 K. The lowest-loss resonators that we measure have quality factors of over 10 ^6 at single-photon powers, among the best ever recorded using the Nb on sapphire platform. We observe the highest quality factors in films grown at an intermediate temperature regime of the growth series (550 K) where the films display both preferential ordering of the crystal domains and low surface roughness. Furthermore, we analyze the temperature-dependent behavior of our resonators to learn about how the quasiparticle density in the Nb film is affected by the niobium crystal structure and the presence of grain boundaries. Our results stress the connection between the crystal structure of superconducting films and the loss mechanisms suffered by the resonators and indicate that even a moderate change in temperature during thin film deposition can significantly affect the resulting quality factors.

A transducer capable of converting single microwave and optical photons with low loss and added noise could lay the foundation for a quantum network. Our strategy for building such a device uses an acoustic resonator as an intermediary between a superconducting transmon qubit and an optical cavity. We outline our progress and share insights into some obstacles that we have encountered when engineering a cryogenic-compatible optical cavity suitable for Brillouin optomechanics. We also discuss the materials and design choices for acoustic resonators in our transduction scheme.

A known source of decoherence in superconducting qubits is the presence of broken Cooper pairs, or quasiparticles. These can be generated by high-energy radiation, either present in the environment or purposefully introduced, as in the case of some hybrid quantum devices. Here, we systematically study the properties of a transmon qubit under illumination by focused infrared radiation with various powers, durations, and spatial locations. Despite the high energy of incident photons, our observations agree well with a model of low-energy quasiparticle dynamics dominated by trapping. This technique can be used for understanding and potentially mitigating the effects of high-energy radiation on superconducting circuits with a variety of geometries and materials.

In recent years, remarkable progress has been made towards encoding and processing quantum information in the large Hilbert space of bosonic modes. Mechanical resonators are of great interest for this purpose, since they confine many high quality factor modes into a small volume and can be easily integrated with many different quantum systems. An important yet challenging task is to create direct interactions between different mechanical modes. Here we demonstrate an in-situ tunable beam-splitter-type interaction between several mechanical modes of a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator. The engineered interaction is mediated by a parametrically driven superconducting transmon qubit, and we show that it can be tailored to couple pairs or triplets of phononic modes. Furthermore, we use this interaction to demonstrate the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect between phonons. Our results lay the foundations for using phononic systems as quantum memories and platforms for quantum simulations.

Although strong nonlinear interactions between quantized excitations are an important resource for quantum technologies based on bosonic oscillator modes, most electromagnetic and mechanical nonlinearities are far too weak to allow for nonlinear effects to be observed at the single-quantum level. This limitation has been overcome in electromagnetic resonators by coupling them to other strongly nonlinear quantum systems such as atoms and superconducting qubits. We demonstrate the realization of the single-phonon nonlinear regime in a solid-state mechanical system. The single-phonon anharmonicity in our system exceeds the decoherence rate by a factor of 6.8, allowing us to use it as a mechanical qubit and demonstrate initialization, readout, and single-qubit gates. Our approach provides a powerful quantum acoustics platform for quantum simulations, sensing, and information processing.

Mechanical degrees of freedom are natural candidates for continuous-variable quantum information processing and bosonic quantum simulations. However, these applications require the engineering of squeezing and nonlinearities in the quantum regime. Here we demonstrate squeezing below the zero-point fluctuations of a gigahertz-frequency mechanical resonator coupled to a superconducting qubit. This is achieved by parametrically driving the qubit, which results in an effective two-phonon drive. In addition, we show that the resonator mode inherits a nonlinearity from the off-resonant coupling with the qubit, which can be tuned by controlling the detuning. We, thus, realize a mechanical squeezed Kerr oscillator, in which we demonstrate the preparation of non-Gaussian quantum states of motion with Wigner function negativities and high quantum Fisher information. This shows that our results can also have applications in quantum metrology and sensing. Mechanical modes promise applications in continuous-variable quantum information processing, but only if the final two elements-squeezing and nonlinearity-are achieved. Experiments with an oscillator coupled to a transmon qubit now achieve this.

According to quantum mechanics, a physical system can be in any linear superposition of its possible states. Although the validity of this principle is routinely validated for microscopic systems, it is still unclear why we do not observe macroscopic objects to be in superpositions of states that can be distinguished by some classical property. Here we demonstrate the preparation of a mechanical resonator in Schrödinger cat states of motion, where the ∼10 17 constituent atoms are in a superposition of two opposite-phase oscillations. We control the size and phase of the superpositions and investigate their decoherence dynamics. Our results offer the possibility of exploring the boundary between the quantum and classical worlds and may find applications in continuous-variable quantum information processing and metrology with mechanical resonators.

Recently, solid-state mechanical resonators have become a platform for demonstrating nonclassical behavior of systems involving a truly macroscopic number of particles. Here, we perform the most macroscopic quantum test in a mechanical resonator to date, which probes the validity of quantum mechanics by ruling out a classical description at the microgram mass scale. This is done by a direct measurement of the Wigner function of a high-overtone bulk acoustic wave resonator mode, monitoring the gradual decay of negativities over tens of microseconds. While the obtained macroscopicity of μ=11.3 is on par with state-of-the-art atom interferometers, future improvements of mode geometry and coherence times could test the quantum superposition principle at unprecedented scales and also place more stringent bounds on spontaneous collapse models.

Bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonators are attractive as intermediaries in a microwave-to-optical transducer, due to their long coherence times and controllable coupling to optical photons and superconducting qubits. However, for an optomechanical transducer to operate without detrimental added noise, the mechanical modes must be in the quantum ground state. This has proven challenging in recent demonstrations of transduction based on other types of mechanical resonators, where absorption of laser light caused heating of the phonon modes. In this work, we demonstrate ground state operation of a Brillouin optomechanical system composed of a quartz BAW resonator inside an optical cavity. The system is operated at $\sim$200 mK temperatures inside a dilution refrigerator, which is made possible by designing the system so that it self-aligns during cooldown and is relatively insensitive to mechanical vibrations. We show optomechanical coupling to several phonon modes and perform sideband asymmetry thermometry to demonstrate a thermal occupation below 0.5 phonons at base temperature. This constitutes the heaviest ($\sim$494 $\mu$g) mechanical object measured in the quantum ground state to date. Further measurements confirm a negligible effect of laser heating on this phonon occupation. Our results pave the way toward low-noise, high-efficiency microwave-to-optical transduction based on BAW resonators.

In circuit quantum acoustodynamics (cQAD), superconducting circuits are combined with acoustic resonators to create and control non-classical states of mechanical motion. Simulating these systems is challenging due to the extreme difference in scale between the microwave and mechanical wavelengths. All existing techniques simulate the electromagnetic and mechanical subsystems separately. However, this approach may not be adequate for all cQAD devices. Here, we demonstrate a single simulation of a superconducting qubit coupled to an acoustic and a microwave resonator and introduce two methods for using this simulation to predict the frequencies, coupling rates, and energy-participation ratios of the electromechanical modes of the hybrid system. We also discuss how these methods can be used to investigate important dissipation channels and quantify the nontrivial effects of mode hybridization in our device. Our methodology is flexible and can be extended to other acoustic resonators and quantum degrees of freedom, providing a valuable new tool for designing hybrid quantum systems.

Bulk acoustic resonators support robust, long-lived mechanical modes, capable of coupling to various quantum systems. In separate works, such devices have achieved strong coupling to both superconducting qubits, via piezoelectricity, and optical cavities, via Brillouin interactions. In this work, we present a novel hybrid microwave/optical platform capable of coupling to bulk acoustic waves through cavity-enhanced piezoelectric and photoelastic interactions. The modular, tunable system achieves fully resonant and well-mode-matched interactions between a 3D microwave cavity, a high-frequency bulk acoustic resonator, and a Fabry Perot cavity. We realize this piezo-Brillouin interaction in x-cut quartz, demonstrating the potential for strong optomechanical interactions and high cooperativity using optical cavity enhancement. We further show how this device functions as a bidirectional electro-opto-mechanical transducer, with quantum efficiency exceeding 10^-8, and a feasible path towards unity conversion efficiency. The high optical sensitivity and ability to apply large resonant microwave field in this system also offers a new tool for probing anomalous electromechanical couplings, which we demonstrate by investigating (nominally-centrosymmetric) CaF_2 and revealing a parasitic piezoelectricity of 83 am/V. Such studies are an important topic for emerging quantum technologies, and highlight the versatility of this new hybrid platform.

Mechanical resonators are emerging as an important new platform for quantum science and technologies. A large number of proposals for using them to store, process and transduce quantum information motivates the development of increasingly sophisticated techniques for controlling mechanical motion in the quantum regime. By interfacing mechanical resonators with superconducting circuits, circuit quantum acoustodynamics can make a variety of important tools available for manipulating and measuring motional quantum states. Here we demonstrate the direct measurements of phonon number distribution and parity of non-classical mechanical states. We do this by operating our system in the strong dispersive regime, where a superconducting qubit can be used to spectroscopically resolve the phonon Fock states. These measurements are some of the basic building blocks for constructing acoustic quantum memories and processors. Furthermore, our results open the door for performing even more complex quantum algorithms using mechanical systems, such as quantum error correction and multimode operations. Mechanical resonators combined with superconducting circuits are a promising platform for controlling non-classical mechanical states. Here this platform is used to directly measure the parity of a motional quantum state.