Single-molecule optics.

Single-molecule detection using continuous wave excitation of two-photon fluorescence.

Two-photon fluorescence (TPF) is one of the most important discoveries for biological imaging. Although a cw laser is known to excite TPF, its application in TPF imaging has been very limited due to the perceived low efficiency of excitation. Here we directly excited fluorophores with an IR cw laser used for optical trapping and achieved single-molecule fluorescence sensitivity: discrete stepwi...

1 Single Molecule Optics - 2013

Extending Single-Molecule Microscopy Using Optical Fourier Processing

This article surveys the recent application of optical Fourier processing to the long-established but still expanding field of single-molecule imaging and microscopy. A variety of single-molecule studies can benefit from the additional image information that can be obtained by modulating the Fourier, or pupil, plane of a widefield microscope. After briefly reviewing several current applications...

A single molecule as a probe of optical intensity distribution.

Single terrylene molecules embedded in microscopic p-terphenyl crystals are identified with the technique of fluorescence excitation spectroscopy. By use of the architecture of a scanning-probe microscope at T = 1.4 K , a single molecule is scanned through an excitation laser beam while the fluorescence signal is recorded. In this manner we have mapped the intensity distribution in a one-dimens...

Voltage-Controlled Entanglement between Quantum- Dot Molecule and its Spontaneous Emission Fields via Quantum Entropy

The time evolution of the quantum entropy in a coherently driven threelevel quantum dot (QD) molecule is investigated. The entanglement of quantum dot molecule and its spontaneous emission field is coherently controlled by the gat voltage and the intensity of applied field. It is shown that the degree of entanglement between a three-level quantum dot molecule and its spontaneous emission fields...

Indistinguishable photons from a single molecule.

We report the results of coincidence counting experiments at the output, of a Michelson interferometer using the zero-phonon-line emission of a single molecule at 1.4 K. Under continuous wave excitation, we observe the absence of coincidence counts as an indication of two-photon interference. This corresponds to the observation of Hong-Ou-Mandel correlations and proves the suitability of the ze...