2007/07/23 by G. Wrigge, Gert Wrigge, Ilja Gerhardt +5 · 7 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Near-Field Optical Microscopy #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nphys812
published as Nature Physics 4, 60 - 66 (2008) · 6 figures
arxiv created 2007/07/23 · openalex publication_date 2007/12/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Single dye molecules at cryogenic temperatures display many spectroscopic phenomena known from free atoms and are thus promising candidates for fundamental quantum optical studies. However, the existing techniques for the detection of single molecules have either sacrificed the information on the coherence of the excited state or have been inefficient. Here we show that these problems can be addressed by focusing the excitation light near to the absorption cross section of a molecule. Our detection scheme allows us to explore resonance fluorescence over 9 orders of magnitude of excitation intensity and to separate its coherent and incoherent parts. In the strong excitation regime, we demonstrate the first observation of the Mollow triplet from a single solid-state emitter. Under weak excitation we report the detection of a single molecule with an incident power as faint as 150 attoWatt, paving the way for studying nonlinear effects with only a few photons.