Related papers: A single-atom level mechano-optical transducer for…
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…
All physical interactions are mediated by forces. Ultra-sensitive force measurements are therefore a crucial tool for investigating the fundamental physics of magnetic, atomic, quantum, and surface phenomena. Laser cooled trapped atomic…
In this work, the force due to radiation pressure is measured with sub-10 pN sensitivity, corresponding to less than 2 mW of optical power. The apparatus adds homemade reflectors to a commercial Cavendish balance, which consists of a…
The detection of weak forces is a central problem in physics and engineering, ranging in importance from fundamental pursuits such as precision tests of gravity, gravitational-wave detection, and searches for dark matter, to applications…
Single-atom quantum sensors offer high spatial resolution and high sensitivity to electric and magnetic fields. Among them, trapped ions offer exceptional performance in sensing electric fields, which has been used in particular to probe…
Since the advent of atomic force microscopy, mechanical resonators have been used to study a wide variety of phenomena, such as the dynamics of individual electron spins, persistent currents in normal metal rings, and the Casimir force. Key…
Sensitive transduction of the motion of a microscale cantilever is central to many applications in mass, force, magnetic resonance, and displacement sensing. Reducing cantilever size to nanoscale dimensions can improve the bandwidth and…
Nanomechanical oscillators have been employed as transducers to measure force, mass and charge with high sensitivity. They are also used in opto- or electromechanical experiments with the goal of quantum control and phenomena of mechanical…
Force sensors are at the heart of different technologies such as atomic force microscopy or inertial sensing \cite{RMPforce2003, Rugar2004, YazdiIEEE}. These sensors often rely on the measurement of the displacement amplitude of mechanical…
A high sensitivity force sensor based on dielectric microspheres in vacuum, optically trapped by a single, upward-propagating laser beam, is described. Off-axis parabolic mirrors are used both to focus the 1064~nm trapping beam and to…
Universal sensing the motion of mechanical resonators with high precision and low back-action is of paramount importance in ultra-weak signal detection which plays a fundamental role in modern physics. Here we present a universal scheme…
A force measurement technique has been developed that utilizes a clamped fiber optic element both as a cantilever and as a highly sensitive probe of the static and dynamic displacement of a sample that is mounted near its free end. Light…
The sensitivity of a mechanical transducer is ultimately limited by its inherent quantum fluctuations. Here, we use an optically levitated nanoparticle to measure impulsive forces smaller than the particle's zero-point momentum uncertainty.…
We introduce quantum sensing schemes for measuring very weak forces with a single trapped ion. They use the spin-motional coupling induced by the laser-ion interaction to transfer the relevant force information to the spin-degree of…
Developing nano-mechanical oscillators for ultrasensitive force detection is of great importance in exploring science. We report our achievement of ultrasensitive detection of the external force regarding the radio-frequency electric field…
We describe a transducer for low-temperature atomic force microscopy based on electromechanical coupling due to a strain-dependent kinetic inductance of a superconducting nanowire. The force sensor is a bending triangular plate (cantilever)…
In our work, we have engineered low capacitance single quantum dot photodiodes as sensor devices for the optoelectronic sampling of ultrafast electric signals. By the Stark effect, a time-dependent electric signal is converted into a…
Miniaturization of force probes into nanomechanical oscillators enables ultrasensitive investigations of forces on dimensions smaller than their characteristic length scale. Meanwhile it also unravels the force field vectorial character and…
Trapped ions are sensitive detectors of weak forces and electric fields that excite ion motion. Here measurements of the center-of-mass motion of a trapped-ion crystal that are phase-coherent with an applied weak external force are…
The center-of-mass motion of optically trapped dielectric nanoparticles in vacuum is extremely well-decoupled from its environment, making a powerful tool for measurements of feeble sub-attonewton forces. We demonstrate a method to trap and…