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Sub- and super-Poissonian photon statistics of single-molecule fluorescence blinking

  • Atoms, Molecules, Optics
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Abstract

An analysis of intermittent fluorescence is presented for a single molecule driven by a continuous-wave laser field. The interruptions of fluorescence are caused by transition of the molecule to a triplet state. A method previously developed to calculate photon distribution for continuous-wave fluorescence is applied to analyze photon statistics of fluorescence blinking. The probability w N (T) of counting N photons over a time interval T is derived for intermittent fluorescence. The photons counted over relatively short intervals are found to have a sub-Poissonian (narrower than Poisson) distribution. The photon distribution over intervals longer than the mean off time has a complicated form with two maxima; i.e., a super-Poissonian (wider than Poisson) distribution is obtained.

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Original Russian Text © I.S. Osad’ko, 2007, published in Zhurnal Éksperimental’noĭ i Teoreticheskoĭ Fiziki, 2007, Vol. 131, No. 6, pp. 978–993.

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Osad’ko, I.S. Sub- and super-Poissonian photon statistics of single-molecule fluorescence blinking. J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 104, 853–865 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063776107060039

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063776107060039

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