Residence time statistics for $N$ blinking quantum dots and other stochastic processes

TL;DR

This paper investigates residence time statistics in systems of multiple blinking quantum dots and other stochastic processes, revealing non-trivial fluctuations and phase transitions that help identify non-ergodic behavior without single-molecule measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for analyzing residence time statistics in many-particle systems, including quantum dots and Brownian particles, highlighting sharp transitions and non-trivial fluctuations.

Findings

Sharp transitions at a critical number of dots

Non-trivial fluctuations in the large N limit

Framework for detecting non-ergodic kinetics

Abstract

We present a study of residence time statistics for $N$ blinking quantum dots. With numerical simulations and exact calculations we show sharp transitions for a critical number of dots. In contrast to expectation the fluctuations in the limit of $N \to \infty$ are non-trivial. Besides quantum dots our work describes residence time statistics in several other many particle systems for example $N$ Brownian particles. Our work provides a natural framework to detect non-ergodic kinetics from measurements of many blinking chromophores, without the need to reach the single molecule limit.