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arXiv:2601.09516

Reservoir-Engineered Refrigeration of a Superconducting Cavity with Double-Quantum-Dot Spin Qubits

Daryoosh Vashaee, Jahanfar Abouie

quant-phSubmitted Jan 14, 2026• Announced Jan 15, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · Jan 14, 2026v2 · Jan 15, 2026v3 · Jan 20, 2026
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Abstract

We present an analytically tractable theory of reservoir-engineered refrigeration of a superconducting microwave cavity and map it onto a realistic solid-state implementation based on gate-defined double-quantum-dot (DQD) spin qubits. Treating the DQD not as a spectroscopic element but as a tunable engineered reservoir, we show how gate control of populations, coherences, linewidths, and detuning defines an effective photon birth-death process with predictable detailed balance. This framework yields closed-form expressions for the cavity steady state, identifies cooling bounds and detuning-dependent refrigeration valleys, and clarifies when refrigeration can drive the cavity below both the bath temperature and the DQD setpoint. By distinguishing refreshed (collision-like) and persistent reservoir regimes, we show how memory effects, saturation, and dark-state formation constrain cooling in realistic devices, while collective bright-mode coupling in a two-dot configuration can enhance refrigeration subject to mismatch and dephasing, as confirmed by numerical Lindblad simulations demonstrating targeted millikelvin cavity cooling relevant for cryogenic circuit-QED architectures.

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We present an analytically tractable theory of reservoir-engineered refrigeration of a superconducting microwave cavity and map it onto a realistic solid-state implementation based on gate-defined double-quantum-dot (DQD) spin qubits. Treating the DQD not as a spectroscopic element but as a tunable engineered reservoir, we show how gate control of populations, coherences, linewidths, and detuning defines an effective photon birth-death process with predictable detailed balance. This framework yields closed-form expressions for the cavity steady state, identifies cooling bounds and detuning-dependent refrigeration valleys, and clarifies when refrigeration can drive the cavity below both the bath temperature and the DQD setpoint. By distinguishing refreshed (collision-like) and persistent reservoir regimes, we show how memory effects, saturation, and dark-state formation constrain cooling in realistic devices, while collective bright-mode coupling in a two-dot configuration can enhance refrigeration subject to mismatch and dephasing, as confirmed by numerical Lindblad simulations demonstrating targeted millikelvin cavity cooling relevant for cryogenic circuit-QED architectures.
We develop a theoretical framework for cooling a microwave cavity mode using a Poisson stream of internally correlated pairs of two-level systems and analyze its performance under realistic dissipation. Starting from a Lindblad model of a phonon-tethered cavity interacting with sequentially injected atom pairs, we derive closed-form expressions for the steady-state cavity occupation and effective temperature. Two coupling geometries are examined: a one-atom configuration, where only one member of each pair interacts with the cavity, and a two-atom configuration, where both atoms couple collectively. The single-atom model enables cooling below the phonon bath but not below the reservoir temperature, whereas the two-atom scheme exhibits enhanced refrigeration - pair correlations modify the cavity's upward and downward transition rates so that the steady-state temperature can fall well below that of the reservoir for weak phonon damping. We map the parameter space including detuning, coupling strength, damping, and intra-pair exchange, identifying cooling valleys near resonance and the crossover between reservoir- and phonon-dominated regimes. The two-atom configuration thus realizes a genuine quantum-enhanced cooling mechanism absent in the single-atom case. We further outline an experimental implementation using two superconducting qubits repeatedly prepared, coupled, and reset inside a 3D cavity. Realistic reset and flux-tuning protocols support MHz-rate interaction cycles, enabling engineered reservoirs to impose cavity temperatures of 50-120 mK even when the cryostat is at ~1 K, offering a pathway to autonomous, on-chip refrigeration of microwave modes in scalable quantum hardware.
Coupling double-quantum-dot circuits to microwave cavities provides a powerful means to control, couple, and manipulate qubits based on the charge or spin of individual electrons. Here, we revisit this standard configuration by adding superconductivity to the circuit. We combine theory and experiment to study a superconductor--double-quantum-dot circuit coupled to microwave cavity photons. First, we use the cavity as a spectroscopic probe. This allows us to determine the low-energy spectrum of the device and to reveal directly Cooper-pair-assisted tunneling between the two dots. Second, we observe a vacuum Rabi splitting which is a signature of strong charge photon coupling and a premiere with carbon-nanotube-based quantum-dot circuits. We show that our circuit design intrinsically combines a set of key features to achieve the strong coupling regime to the cavity. A low charging energy reduces the device sensitivity to charge noise, while sufficient coupling is provided by the shaping of the spectrum of the double quantum dot by the superconducting reservoir. Our findings could be adapted to many other circuit designs and shed light on the coupling of superconducting nanoscale devices to microwave fields.
We consider a pair of quantum dot-based spin qubits that interact via microwave photons in a superconducting cavity and that are also parametrically driven by separate external electric fields. For this system, we formulate a model for spin qubit entanglement in the presence of mutually off-resonant qubit and cavity frequencies. We show that the sidebands generated via the driving fields enable highly tunable qubit-qubit entanglement using only ac control and without requiring the qubit and cavity frequencies to be tuned into simultaneous resonance. The model we derive can be mapped to a variety of qubit types, including detuning-driven one-electron spin qubits in double quantum dots and three-electron resonant exchange qubits in triple quantum dots. The high degree of nonlinearity inherent in spin qubits renders these systems particularly favorable for parametric drive-activated entanglement. We determine multiple common resonance conditions for the two driven qubits and the cavity and identify experimentally relevant parameter regimes that enable the implementation of entangling gates with suppressed sensitivity to cavity photon occupation and decay. The parametrically driven sideband resonance approach that we describe provides a promising route toward scalability and modularity in spin-based quantum information processing through drive-enabled tunability that can also be implemented in micromagnet-free electron and hole systems for spin-photon coupling. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Engineered quantum systems are poised to revolutionize information science in the near future. A persistent challenge in applied quantum technology is creating controllable, quantum interactions while preventing information loss to the environment, decoherence. In this thesis, we realize mesoscopic superconducting circuits whose macroscopic collective degrees of freedom, such as voltages and currents, behave quantum mechanically. We couple these mesoscopic devices to microwave cavities forming a cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) architecture comprised entirely of circuit elements. This application of cavity QED is dubbed Circuit QED and is an interdisciplinary field seated at the intersection of electrical engineering, superconductivity, quantum optics, and quantum information science. Two popular methods for taming active quantum systems in the presence of decoherence are discrete feedback conditioned on an ancillary system or quantum reservoir engineering. Quantum reservoir engineering maintains a desired subset of a Hilbert space through a combination of drives and designed entropy evacuation. Circuit QED provides a favorable platform for investigating quantum reservoir engineering proposals. A major advancement of this thesis is the development of a quantum reservoir engineering protocol which maintains the quantum state of a microwave cavity in the presence of decoherence. This thesis synthesizes strongly coupled, coherent devices whose solutions to its driven, dissipative Hamiltonian are predicted a priori. This work lays the foundation for future advancements in cavity centered quantum reservoir engineering protocols realizing hardware efficient circuit QED designs.
We demonstrate a hybrid device architecture where the charge states in a double quantum dot (DQD) formed in a Si/SiGe heterostructure are read out using an on-chip superconducting microwave cavity. A quality factor Q = 5400 is achieved by selectively etching away regions of the quantum well and by reducing photon losses through low-pass filtering of the gate bias lines. Homodyne measurements of the cavity transmission reveal DQD charge stability diagrams and a charge-cavity coupling rate gc/2π= 23 MHz. These measurements indicate that electrons trapped in a Si DQD can be effectively coupled to microwave photons, potentially enabling coherent electron-photon interactions in silicon.
Considering the example of superconducting circuits, we show how Floquet engineering can be combined with reservoir engineering for the controlled preparation of target states. Floquet engineering refers to the control of a quantum system by means of time-periodic forcing, typically in the high-frequency regime, so that the system is governed effectively by a time-independent Floquet Hamiltonian with novel interesting properties. Reservoir engineering, on the other hand, can be achieved in superconducting circuits by coupling a system of artificial atoms (or qubits) dispersively to pumped leaky cavities, so that the induced dissipation guides the system into a desired target state. It is not obvious that the two approaches can be combined, since reaching the dispersive regime, in which system and cavities exchange excitations only virtually, can be spoiled by driving-induced resonant transitions. However, working in the extended Floquet space and treating both system-cavity coupling as well as driving-induced excitation processes on the same footing perturbatively, we identify regimes, where reservoir engineering of targeted Floquet states is possible and accurately described by an effective time-independent master equation. We successfully benchmark our approach for the preparation of the ground state in a system of interacting bosons subjected to Floquet-engineered magnetic fields in different lattice geometries.