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arXiv · 2207.07305

Detection of DC electric forces with zeptonewton sensitivity by single-ion phonon laser

Ya-Qi Wei·Ying-Zheng Wang·Zhi-Chao Liu·Tai-Hao Cui·Liang Chen·Ji Li·Shuang-Qin Dai·Fei Zhou·Mang Feng
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Abstract

Detecting extremely small forces helps exploring new physics quantitatively. Here we demonstrate that the phonon laser made of a single trapped $^{40}$Ca$^{+}$ ion behaves as an exquisite sensor for small force measurement. We report our successful detection of small electric forces regarding the DC trapping potential with sensitivity of 2.41$\pm$0.49 zN/$\sqrt{{\rm Hz}}$, with the ion only under Doppler cooling, based on the injection-locking of the oscillation phase of the phonon laser in addition to the classical squeezing applied to suppress the measurement uncertainty. We anticipate that such a single-ion sensor would reach a much better force detection sensitivity in the future once the trapping system is further improved and the fluorescence collection efficiency is further enhanced.

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Ya-Qi Wei, Ying-Zheng Wang, Zhi-Chao Liu, Tai-Hao Cui, Liang Chen, Ji Li, Shuang-Qin Dai, Fei Zhou, Mang Feng. 2022-07-15. Detection of DC electric forces with zeptonewton sensitivity by single-ion phonon laser. https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.07305

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