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.