SCOPE OF THE CONFERENCE Roughly a century ago, at the dawn of modern quantum mechanics, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr predicted so-called quantum jumps. He predicted that these jumps would be due to electrons making transitions between discrete energy levels of individual atoms and molecules. Although controversial in Bohrs time, such quantum jumps were experimentally observed, and his prediction verified, in the 1980s. More recently, with the development of single molecule imaging techniques in the early 1990s, it has been possible to observe similar jumps in individual molecules. Experimentally, these quantum jumps translate to discrete interruptions of the continuous emission from single molecules, revealing a phenomenon known as florescent intermittency or blinking. However, while certain instances of blinking can be directly ascribed to Bohrs original quantum jumps, many more cases exist where the observed fluorescence intermittency does not follow his predictions. Specifically, in systems as diverse as fluorescent proteins, single-light harvesting complexes, single organic fluorophores, and, most recently, individual inorganic nanostructures, clear deviations from Bohrs predictions occur. As a consequence, virtually all know fluorophores, including fluorescent quantum dots and molecules, exhibit unexplainable episodes of intermittent blinking in their emission. The underlying quantum mechanical process responsible for this phenomenon is an enduring mystery in modern chemical physics. The aim of the conference is to bring together world experts in the area of flourescence intermittency, and to make progress in our understanding of the phenomena and theoretical models of blinking in a wide range of molecular and nanoscale systems. |
