Looking at a blinking quantum emitter through time slots: The effect of blind times

Abstract

Most experimental observations of physical processes are naturally accompanied by "blind" ("dead") times, which in principle can distort the result of measurements. Here we analyze how the presence of blind times in measurements changes the measured statistics of blinking fluorescence of single quantum dots. We show that information can be extracted even for blinking processes with characteristic times longer than both blind times and time slots between them.