Ultrasensitive force and displacement detection using trapped ions

Understand

The ability to detect extremely small forces is vital for a variety of disciplines including precision spin-resonance imaging, microscopy, and tests of fundamental physical phenomena.

• Current force-detection sensitivity limits have surpassed 1 $aN/\sqrt{Hz}$ (atto $=10^{-18}$) through coupling of micro or nanofabricated mechanical resonators to a variety of physical systems including single-electron transistors, superconducting microwave cavities, and individual spins.
• These experiments have allowed for probing studies of a variety of phenomena, but sensitivity requirements are ever-increasing as new regimes of physical interactions are considered.
• Here we show that trapped atomic ions are exquisitely sensitive force detectors, with a measured sensitivity more than three orders of magnitude better than existing reports.