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

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 ±0.49) zN/√(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.