External-level assisted cooling by measurement

Abstract

A quantum resonator in a thermal-equilibrium state with a high temperature has a large average population and is featured with significant occupation over Fock states with a high excitation number. The resonator could be cooled down via continuous measurements on the ground state of a coupled two-level system (qubit). We find, however, that the measurement-induced cooling might become inefficient in the high-temperature regime. Beyond the conventional strategy, we introduce strong driving between the excited state of the qubit and an external level. It can remarkably broaden the cooling range in regard to the non-vanishing populated Fock states of the resonator. Without any precooling procedure, our strategy allows a significant reduction of the populations over Fock states with a high excitation number, giving rise to nondeterministic ground-state cooling after a sequence of measurements. The driving-induced fast transition constrains the resonator and the ancillary qubit at their ground state upon measurement and then simulates the quantum Zeno effect. Our protocol is applied to cool down a high-temperature magnetic resonator. Additionally, it is generalized to a hybrid cooling protocol by interpolating the methods with and without strong driving, which can accelerate the cooling process and increase the overlap between the final state of the resonator and its ground state.