  We experimentally investigate the temperature dependence of Rabi oscillations
and Ramsey fringes in superconducting phase qubits driven by microwave pulses.
In a wide range of temperatures, we find that both the decay time and the
amplitude of these coherent oscillations remain nearly unaffected by thermal
fluctuations. The oscillations are observed well above the crossover
temperature from thermally activated escape to quantum tunneling for undriven
qubits. In the two-level limit, coherent qubit response rapidly vanishes as
soon as the energy of thermal fluctuations kT becomes larger than the energy
level spacing of the qubit. Our observations shed new light on the origin of
decoherence in superconducting qubits. The experimental data suggest that,
without degrading already achieved coherence times, phase qubits can be
operated at temperatures much higher than those reported till now.
