Non-ergodic Intensity Correlation Functions for Blinking Nano Crystals

TL;DR

This paper studies the non-ergodic behavior of blinking nano-crystals by analyzing their intensity correlation functions, revealing non-trivial distribution shapes and extending the findings to other complex stochastic systems.

Contribution

It introduces a stochastic approach to characterize non-ergodicity in blinking nano-crystals and related systems, providing new insights into their correlation function distributions.

Findings

Distribution functions are W or U shaped, not delta peaked.

Results apply to various systems modeled by Levy walks and chaotic dynamics.

Highlights non-ergodic properties in single-molecule and nano-scale systems.

Abstract

We investigate the non-ergodic properties of blinking nano-crystals using a stochastic approach. We calculate the distribution functions of the time averaged intensity correlation function and show that these distributions are not delta peaked on the ensemble average correlation function values; instead they are W or U shaped. Beyond blinking nano-crystals our results describe non-ergodicity in systems stochastically modeled using the Levy walk framework for anomalous diffusion, for example certain types of chaotic dynamics, currents in ion-channel, and single spin dynamics to name a few.