Three-Dimensional Superconducting Resonators at T < 20 mK with Photon Lifetimes up to τ = 2 s

Very-high-quality-factor superconducting radio-frequency cavities developed for accelerators can enable fundamental physics searches with orders of magnitude higher sensitivity, and they can also offer a path to a 1000-fold increase in the achievable coherence times for cavity-stored quantum states in three-dimensional circuit QED architecture. Here we report measurements of multiple accelerator cavities of resonant frequencies of f0=1.3 , 2.6, 5 GHz down to temperatures of about 10 mK and field levels down to a few photons, which reveal very long photon lifetimes up to 2 s, while also further exposing the role of the two-level systems (TLS) in niobium oxide. We also demonstrate how the TLS contribution can be greatly suppressed by vacuum heat treatments at 340–450 ° C .