A single-atom level mechano-optical transducer for ultrasensitive force sensing

Abstract

Using light as a probe to detect a mechanical motion is one of the most successful experimental approaches in physics. The history of mechanical sensing based on the reflection, refraction and scattering of light dates back to the 16th century, where in the Cavendish experiment, the angle of rotation induced by the gravitational force is measured by the deflection of a light beam reflected from a mirror attached to the suspension. In modern science, mechano-optical transducers are such devices that could detect, measure and convert a force or displacement signal to an optical one, and are widely used for force detection. Especially, ultraweak force sensor with ultrahigh spatial resolution is highly demanded for detecting force anomaly in surface science, biomolecule imaging, and atomtronics. Here we show a novel scheme using a single trapped ion as a mechano-optical transduction. This method utilizes the force-induced micromotion, converting the micromotion to a time-resolved fluorescence signal, in which the ion's excess micromotion coupled to the Doppler shift of the scattered photons. We demonstrate the measurement sensitivity about 600 $\text{zN}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}}$ (1 $\text{zN}=10^{-21}$N). By alternating the detection laser beam in all three dimensions, the amplitude and the direction of a vector force can be precisely determined, constituting a 3D force sensor. This mechano-optical transducer provides high sensitivity with spatial resolution in single-atom level, enabling the applications in material industry and the search for possible exotic spin-dependent interactions that beyond the standard model.

References in corpus (29)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Quantum sensing
• Search for New Physics with Atoms and Molecules
• New Experimental Limits on Macroscopic Forces Below 100 Microns
• Spin-Dependent Macroscopic Forces from New Particle Exchange
• Quantum-enhanced sensing of displacements and electric fields with large trapped-ion crystals
• Quantum amplification of mechanical oscillator motion
• Ion traps with enhanced optical and physical access
• Ultrasensitive force and displacement detection using trapped ions
• Compact cold atom gravimeter for field applications
• Stronger limits on hypothetical Yukawa interactions in the 40--8000 nm range
• A classical channel model for gravitational decoherence
• Motional Fock states for quantum-enhanced amplitude and phase measurements with trapped ions
• Precise determination of micromotion for trapped-ion optical clocks
• State Readout of a Trapped Ion Qubit Using a Trap-Integrated Superconducting Photon Detector
• New limits on Anomalous Spin-Spin Interactions
• Measurement of the magnetic interaction between two electrons
• A high-precision rf trap with minimized micromotion for an In+ multiple-ion clock
• Searching for new particles beyond the standard model with a single electron-spin quantum sensor
• Testing quantum gravity by nanodiamond interferometry with nitrogen-vacancy centers
• Development of compact cold-atom sensors for inertial navigation
• Amplitude sensing below the zero-point fluctuations with a two-dimensional trapped-ion mechanical oscillator
• Constraints on exotic dipole-dipole couplings between electrons at the micrometer scale
• Quantum Lock-in Force Sensing using Optical Clock Doppler Velocimetry
• High resolution adaptive imaging of a single atom
• Ion trajectory analysis for micromotion minimization and the measurement of small forces
• Experimental Constraint on an Exotic Parity-Odd Spin- and Velocity-Dependent Interaction with a Single Electron Spin Quantum Sensor
• Mass-selective removal of ions from Paul traps using parametric excitation
• Minimization of ion micromotion with artificial neural network