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Physical Review Letters

Single-Molecule Photon Counting Statistics via Generalized Optical Bloch Equations

Yujun Zheng, Frank L. H. Brown

Published Jun 13, 2003• 129 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We derive the generating function for single molecule photon emission events within the context of the stochastically modulated optical Bloch equations. Statistical properties of single molecule photon counting experiments are deduced from a set of coupled differential equations only slightly more complicated than the Bloch equations themselves. This formulation allows for the study of photon bunching and antibunching within a single theoretical framework and provides a description of these behaviors that emphasizes the connection with single molecule experiments. Application is made to the spectroscopy of a chromophore coupled to a single two level system.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.90.238305

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We derive the generating function for single molecule photon emission events within the context of the stochastically modulated optical Bloch equations. Statistical properties of single molecule photon counting experiments are deduced from a set of coupled differential equations only slightly more complicated than the Bloch equations themselves. This formulation allows for the study of photon bunching and antibunching within a single theoretical framework and provides a description of these behaviors that emphasizes the connection with single molecule experiments. Application is made to the spectroscopy of a chromophore coupled to a single two level system.
The detection of photons emitted from a single molecule under the influence of electromagnetic radiation is considered. Utilizing a generating function formalism, we derive several exact results for the statistics of such emitted photons within the framework of the temporally modulated optical Bloch equations. Additionally, it is shown how these results reduce to previously obtained limiting behaviors. An appealing feature of this formulation is the inclusion of both photon bunching and anti-bunching effects within a single theoretical framework that is well suited for numerical analysis. Several examples are considered to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach in calculations. In most cases, these results verify known phenomena. In one case, we report a result that was missed by prior approximate treatments. This new effect centers around the fact that a chromophore will display anti-bunching behavior in the limit of fast modulation of the resonant absorption frequency.
The statistics of photon emission from a single molecule under continuous wave excitation are considered. In particular, we study stochastic model systems where photon emission rates evolve in time with non-Markovian dynamics. Our calculations are based on the recently introduced generalized optical Bloch equation (GBE) formalism, but with numerical complications beyond those seen in previous Markovian stochastic models. A spectral representation is introduced to facilitate the numerical solution of the GBE equations for these more challenging cases.
A general theory and calculation framework for the prediction of frequency-resolved single molecule photon counting statistics is presented. Expressions for the generating function of photon counts are derived, both for the case of naive "detection" based solely on photon emission from the molecule and also for experimentally realizable detection of emitted photons, and are used to explicitly calculate low-order photon-counting moments. The two cases of naive detection versus physical detection are compared to one another and it is demonstrated that the physical detection scheme resolves certain inconsistencies predicted via the naive detection approach. Applications to two different models for molecular dynamics are considered: a simple two-level system and a two-level absorber subject to spectral diffusion.
We extend the generating function technique for calculation of single molecule photon emission statistics (Zheng, Y.; Brown, F. L. H. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2003, 90, 238305) to systems governed by multi-level quantum dynamics. This opens up the possibility to study phenomena that are outside the realm of purely stochastic and mixed quantum-stochastic models. In particular, the present methodology allows for calculation of photon statistics that are spectrally resolved and subject to quantum coherence. Several model calculations illustrate the generality of the technique and highlight quantitative and qualitative differences between quantum mechanical models and related stochastic approximations when they arise. Calculations suggest that studying photon statistics as a function of photon frequency has the potential to reveal more about system dynamics than the usual broadband detection schemes.
A theory is formulated for time dependent fluctuations of the spectrum of a single molecule in a dynamic environment. In particular, we investigate the photon counting statistics of a single molecule undergoing a spectral diffusion process. Based on the stochastic optical Bloch equation, fluctuations are characterized by Mandel's QQQ parameter yielding the variance of number of emitted photons and the second order intensity correlation function, g(2)(t)g^{(2)}(t)g(2)(t). Using a semi-classical approach and linear response theory, we show that the QQQ parameter can be described by a three-time dipole correlation function. This approach gene ralizes the Wiener-Khintchine formula that gives the average number of fluorescent photons in terms of a one-time dipole correlation function. We classify the time ordering properties of the three-time dipole correlation function, and show that it can be represented by three different pulse shape functions similar to those used in the context of nonlinear spectroscopy. An exact solution is found for a single molecule whose absorption frequency undergoes a two state random telegraph process (i.e., the Kubo-Anderson sudden jump process.) Simple expressions are obtained from the exact solution in the slow and fast modulation regimes based on appropriate approximations for each case. In the slow modulation regime QQQ can be large even in the long time limit, while in the fast modulation regime it becomes small.
By considering single chromophore systems whose radiative decay can be written in terms of a nonlocal Lindblad-type evolution, the authors extend the formalism of generalized optical Bloch equations [Y. Zheng and F. L. H. Brown, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 238305 (2003)] to non-Markovian dynamics. They demonstrate that photon statistical properties such as bunching and antibunching, as well as sub- and super-Poissonian photon statistics can be fitted in the context of non-Markovian dynamics. The nonlocal effects may arise due to the interaction with a complex structured environment. In this case, the photon statistics can be related with the parameters that define the microscopic system-environment interaction. Alternatively, the authors demonstrate that effective dynamics such as triplet blinking, where the system is coupled via incoherent transitions to an extra dark state, can also be worked out in terms of generalized non-Markovian optical Bloch equations. The corresponding memory contributions are mapped with those that arise from the microscopic approach.