High-resolution subsurface exploration could get a boost with innovative approaches that take advantage of the underlying dynamics of atomic force microscopy. By carefully manipulating the oscillations of the probe and substrate in an unconventional manner, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Laurene Tetard and Ali Passian are able to set up what they call a "virtual resonance" that dramatically increases resolution. They liken the process to "atomic collisions" where dipole-dipole coupling between two atoms creates new nonlinear optical processes. Their results are published in Physical Review Letters in a paper titled "Virtual resonance and frequency difference generation by Van der Waals interaction."
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