Distribution of the decay rate constants of individual excited probes surrounded by randomly distributed quenchers

Abstract

Recent development in single molecule spectroscopy enabled us to measure the decay kinetics of individual excited probes surrounded by randomly distributed quenchers. Since the distribution of quenchers around individual excited probes change from one excited probe to another, the quenching rate constant also changes from one excited probe to another. We calculated the distribution of quenching rate constants of individual excited probes theoretically and analyzed the observed distributions of quenching rate constants, which were recently measured by Lupton [J. Phys. Chem. C 111, 11511 (2007)] by using single molecule spectroscopy. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.