Relationship between the non linear dynamic behaviour of an oscillating   tip-microlever system and the contrast at the atomic scale
  In this paper, the dynamic behaviour of an oscillating tip-microlever system at the proximity of a surface is discussed. The attractive tip-surface interaction is simply described with a Van der Waals dispersive term and a sphere-plane geometry. We show that the non linear behaviour of the oscillator is able to explain the observed shifts of the resonance frequency as a function of the tip-surface distance without the need of introducing a particular short range force. 
Jean-Pierre Aim\'e (CPMOH), G\'erard Couturier (CPMOH), Rodolphe   Boisgard (CPMOH), Laurent Nony (L2MP)