%0 Journal Article
%T Thermal and Residual Excited-State Population in a 3D Transmon Qubit
%A X. Y. Jin
%A A. Kamal
%A A. P. Sears
%A T. Gudmundsen
%A D. Hover
%A J. Miloxi
%A R. Slattery
%A F. Yan
%A J. Yoder
%A T. P. Orlando
%A S. Gustavsson
%A W. D. Oliver
%J Physics
%D 2014
%I arXiv
%R 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.240501
%X We present a systematic study of the first excited-state population in a 3D transmon qubit mounted in a dilution refrigerator with a variable temperature. Using a modified version of the protocol developed by Geerlings et al. [1], we observe the excited-state population to be consistent with a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, i.e., a qubit in thermal equilibrium with the refrigerator, over the temperature range 35-150 mK. Below 35 mK, the excited-state population saturates to 0.1%, near the resolution of our measurement. We verified this result using a flux qubit with ten-times stronger coupling to its readout resonator. We conclude that these qubits have effective temperature T_{eff} = 35 mK. Assuming T_{eff} is due solely to hot quasiparticles, the inferred qubit lifetime is 108 us and in plausible agreement with the measured 80 us.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2772v3