In this talk, I present an experimental realization of a quantum absorption refrigerator formed from superconducting circuits. The refrigerator is used to reset a transmon qubit to a temperature lower than that achievable with any one available bath. The process is driven by a thermal gradient and is autonomous -- requires no external control. The refrigerator exploits an engineered three-body interaction between the target qubit and two auxiliary qudits coupled to thermal environments, formed from microwave waveguides populated with thermal photons. If initially fully excited, the target qubit reaches a steady-state excited-level population of 3×10-4 ±2×10-4 (an effective temperature of 22 mK) in about 1.8 μs. This platform represents the first realization of an autonomous quantum machine that can fulfill a useful purpose in a quantum-computing platform, thus bringing practicality into quantum-thermodynamic technologies.

[1] Aamir, Jamet Suria, JAMG, Castillo-Moreno, Epstein, Yunger Halpern, and Gasparinetti, Nat. Phys. (2025).

[2] JAMG, Erker, Gasparinetti, Huber, and Yunger Halpern, Rep. Prog. Phys. 87 122001 (2024).

Pizza and drinks will be served after the seminar in ATL 2117.