Single molecule diffusion and the solution of the spherically symmetric residence time equation

Noam Agmon*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

The residence time of a single dye molecule diffusing within a laser spot is propotional to the total number of photons emitted by it. With this application in mind, we solve the spherically symmetric "residence time equation" (RTE) to obtain the solution for the Laplace transformof themean residence time (MRT) within a d-dimensional ball, as a function of the initial location of the particle and the observation time. The solutions for initial conditions of potential experimental interest, starting in the center, on the surface or uniformly within the ball, are explicitly presented. Special cases for dimensions 1, 2, and 3 are obtained, which can be Laplace inverted analytically for d = 1 and 3. In addition, the analytic short- and long-time asymptotic behaviors of theMRTare derived and comparedwith the exact solutions for d = 1, 2, and 3. As a demonstration of the simplification afforded by the RTE, the Appendix obtains the residence time distribution by solving the Feynman-Kac equation, from which the MRT is obtained by differentiation. Single-molecule diffusion experiments could be devised to test the results for the MRT presented in this work.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5838-5846
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry A
Volume115
Issue number23
DOIs
StatePublished - 16 Jun 2011

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