In atomic force microscopy, cantilevers with a reflective coating are often used to reduce optical shot noise for deflection detection. However, static AFM experiments can be limited by classical noise and therefore may not benefit from a reduction in shot noise. Furthermore, the cantilever coating has the detrimental side-effect of coupling light power fluctuations into true cantilever bending caused by time-varying thermal stresses. Here, we distinguish three classes of noise: detection, force, and displacement noise. We discuss these noises with respect to cantilever coating in the context of both static and dynamic AFM experiments. Finally, we present a patterned cantilever coating which reduces the impact of these noises.

Useful sample information can be extracted from the dissipation in frequency modulation atomic force microscopy due to its correlation to important material properties. It has been recently shown that artifacts can often be observed in the dissipation channel, due to the spurious mechanical resonances of the atomic force microscope instrument when the oscillation frequency of the force sensor changes. In this paper, we present another source of instrumental artifacts specific to magnetic force microscopy (MFM), which is attributed to a magnetization switching happening at the apex of MFM tips. These artifacts can cause a misinterpretation of the domain structure in MFM images of magnetic samples.

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Focused ion beam (FIB) milling is a common fabrication technique to make nanostencil masks which has the unintended consequence of gallium ion implantation surrounding milled features in silicon nitride membranes. We observe major changes in film structure, chemical composition, and magnetic behaviour of permalloy nanostructures deposited by electron beam evaporation using silicon nitride stencil masks made by a FIB as compared to stencil masks made by regular lithography techniques. We characterize the stenciled structures and both types of masks using transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, magnetic force microscopy and kelvin probe force microscopy. All these techniques demonstrate distinct differences at a length scale of a 1-100 nm for the structures made using stencil mask fabricated using a FIB. The origin of these differences seems to be related to the presence of implanted ions, a detailed understanding of the mechanism however remains to be developed.

Linear frequency modulated (LFM) continuous active sonar (CAS) waveforms show promise for use in target tracking given that waveforms can be split into sub-waveforms (sub-bands), thereby increasing the target refresh rate. However, reducing the duration and bandwidth of the sub-band decreases the SNR/SRR, adversely affecting detection. We present a target detection technique in which sub-bands are averaged incoherently while exploiting the range bias error (commonly observed in large duration LFM CAS waveforms with significant Doppler) to significantly improve detection. Sub-band averaging, known to reduce the false alarm rate, also mitigates channel coherence losses while maintaining detectability in CAS. A method for performing incoherent averaging over many possible Doppler shifts and identifying contacts via clustering in the 3-dimensional range-bearing-Doppler parameter space will be described. Finally, the promising results obtained with this technique on data acquired by the 2016 Littoral CAS Multi-National Joint Research Project sea trial will be shown. [This work was funded by NATO Allied Command Transformation Future Solutions Branch under the Autonomous Security Network Programme and the LCAS MN-JRP.]