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Statistical Evaluation of Single Nano‐Object Fluorescence
Author(s) -
Lippitz Markus,
Kulzer Florian,
Orrit Michel
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
chemphyschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.016
H-Index - 140
eISSN - 1439-7641
pISSN - 1439-4235
DOI - 10.1002/cphc.200400560
Subject(s) - fluorescence correlation spectroscopy , statistical physics , nano , simple (philosophy) , computer science , statistical analysis , field (mathematics) , biological system , point (geometry) , fluorescence , nanotechnology , physics , materials science , optics , statistics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , philosophy , geometry , epistemology , pure mathematics , biology
Single nano‐objects display strong fluctuations of their fluorescence signals. These random and irreproducible variations must be subject to statistical analysis to provide microscopic information. We review the main evaluation methods used so far by experimentalists in the field of single‐molecule spectroscopy: time traces, correlation functions, distributions of “on” and “off” times, higher‐order correlations. We compare their advantages and weaknesses from a theoretical point of view, illustrating our main conclusions with simple numerical simulations. We then review experiments on different types of single nano‐objects, the phenomena which are observed and the statistical analyses applied to them.