  Atomic vibrations control all thermally activated processes in materials
including diffusion, heat transport, phase transformations, and surface
chemistry. Recent developments in monochromated, aberration-corrected scanning
transmission electron microscopy (STEM) have enabled nanoscale probing of
vibrational modes using a focused electron beam. However, to date, no
experimental atomic resolution vibrational spectroscopy has been reported. Here
we demonstrate atomic resolution by exploiting localized impact excitations of
vibrational modes in materials. We show that the impact signal yields high
spatial resolution in both covalent and ionic materials, and atomic resolution
is available from both optical and acoustic vibrational modes. We achieve a
spatial resolution of better than 2 {\AA} which is an order of magnitude
improvement compared to previous work. Our approach represents an important
technical advance that can be used to provide new insights into the
relationship between the thermal, elastic and kinetic properties of materials
and atomic structural heterogeneities.
