Thermal microwave states acting on a superconducting qubit

We analyze the influence of broadband thermal states in the microwave regime on the coherence properties of a superconducting (transmon) qubit coupled to a transmission line resonator. We generate the thermal states inside the resonator by heating a 30 dB attenuator to emit blackbody radiation into a transmission line. In the absence of thermal fluctuations, the qubit coherence time is limited by relaxation. We find that the relaxation rate is almost unaffected by the presence of a thermal field inside the resonator. However, such states induce significant dephasing which increases quadratically with the number of thermal photons, whereas for a coherent population of the resonator, the increase shows a linear behavior. These results confirm the different photon statistics, being Poissonian for a coherent population and super-Poissonian for a thermal population of the resonator.