Super-Poissonian statistics of on-off jumps in blinking fluorescence of single molecules

Photon statistics in blinking fluorescence of single PPV-PPyV molecule

A theoretical six-level model for blinking fluorescence of single PPV-PPyV copolymer molecule excited by CW-laser light is proposed. The model has been chosen in accordance with the following facts found in the Paul Barbara group experiment: (i) alternation of two types of fluorescence with moderate and strong levels of emission, (ii) existence of "dark" states with no fluorescence, (iii) linear dependence of inverse on-interval duration on laser intensity, and (iv) existence of laser intensity independent off-intervals. Relations between the distribution function w''(N, T) for photons emitted by a single molecule, the distribution function w'(N, T) for photons arriving at photomultiplier tube (PMT) and photo-electric pulse distribution w(N, T) created in a PMT are discussed. The theory is able to describe pulse distribution function w(N, T) measured experimentally at signal acquisition time T = 0.1 s. Values of all rate constants of the model have been found from comparison of the theory with the experiment. Distributions w(on, off)(t) of on- and off-times and distribution w(N, T) of pulses have been calculated for infrequent and frequent inter-conformational jumps in single copolymer molecule.

Thermodynamics of quantum jump trajectories in systems driven by classical fluctuations

The large-deviation method can be used to study the measurement trajectories of open quantum systems. For optical arrangements this formalism allows to describe the long time properties of the (nonequilibrium) photon counting statistics in the context of a (equilibrium) thermodynamic approach defined in terms of dynamical phases and transitions between them in the trajectory space [J. P. Garrahan and I. Lesanovsky, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 160601 (2010)]. In this paper, we study the thermodynamic approach for fluorescent systems coupled to complex reservoirs that induce stochastic fluctuations in their dynamical parameters. In a fast modulation limit the thermodynamics corresponds to that of a Markovian two-level system. In a slow modulation limit, the thermodynamic properties are equivalent to those of a finite system that in an infinite-size limit is characterized by a first-order transition. The dynamical phases correspond to different intensity regimes, while the size of the system is measured by the transition rate of the bath fluctuations. As a function of a dimensionless intensive variable, the first and second derivatives of the thermodynamic potential develop an abrupt change and a narrow peak, respectively. Their scaling properties are consistent with a double-Gaussian probability distribution of the associated extensive variable.