In this paper we present the experimental setup of the Hanbury Brown - Twiss interferometer and the measurement results of the antibunching effect from single Rhodamine B dye molecules and single CdTe quantum dots in dilute solution. By fitting the second order correlation data, we derive a fluorescence lifetime of approximately 2 ns for Rhodamine B and 45 ns for CdTe quantum dots. Our results demonstrate an alternative way for determining the fluorescence lifetime using the antibunching effect. | Communications in Physics, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2016), pp. 67-73 DOI: MEASURING ANTI-BUNCHING EFFECT FROM SINGLE DYE MOLECULES AND SINGLE QUANTUM DOTS NGUYEN THI THANH BAO AND DINH VAN TRUNG† Institute of Physics, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology DANG TUYET PHUONG Institute of Chemistry, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology † E-mail: dvtrung@ Received 02 February 2016 Accepted for publication 05 May 2016 Abstract. Antibunching is a quantum effect demonstrating clearly the quantum nature of the radiation field. Its detection through measurements of the second order correlation function is a direct proof of the presence of single molecule or single nano particle. In this paper we present the experimental setup of the Hanbury Brown - Twiss interferometer and the measurement results of the antibunching effect from single Rhodamine B dye molecules and single CdTe quantum dots in dilute solution. By fitting the second order correlation data, we derive a fluorescence lifetime of approximately 2 ns for Rhodamine B and 45 ns for CdTe quantum dots. Our results demonstrate an alternative way for determining the fluorescence lifetime using the antibunching effect. Keywords: quantum dot, Rhodamine, antibunching. Classification numbers: , . I. INTRODUCTION Detection and characterization of single molecules or single nanoparticle have been studied intensively with applications in many different research fields such as nanoscience and nanotechnology, molecular biology etc. [1–12]. At single molecule or single nanoparticle level such as quantum dots the radiation field cannot be described satisfactorily in the classical sense and the its quantum properties become more apparent. Basically these emitters now behave as single photon sources and their characterization is most often investigated using second order correlation function or the photon antibunching effect measured with the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss .
