"Noiseless" thermal noise measurement of atomic force microscopy cantilevers

Basile Pottier (1) , Ludovic Bellon (1)

1 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon

When measuring quadratic values representative of random fluctuations, such as the thermal noise of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) cantilevers, the background measurement noise cannot be averaged to zero. We present a signal processing method that allows to get rid of this limitation using the ubiquitous optical beam deflection sensor of standard AFMs. We demonstrate a two orders of magnitude enhancement of the signal to noise ratio in our experiment, allowing the calibration of stiff cantilevers or easy identification of higher order modes from thermal noise measurements.

Mots clés: Cross correlation; Shot noise limited signals; Thermal noise; Atomic force microscopy; cantilever

Domaines: Instrumentations et Détecteurs [physics.ins-det]; Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]

Basile Pottier, Ludovic Bellon. "Noiseless" thermal noise measurement of atomic force microscopy cantilevers. Applied Physics Letters, 2017, 110, pp.094105. ⟨10.1063/1.4977790⟩. ⟨hal-01485079⟩