Pulse-shaped broadband multiphoton excitation for single-molecule fluorescence detection in the far field

Multiphoton excitation of fluorescence has many potential advantages over resonant (one-photon) excitation, but the method has not found widespread use for ultrasensitive applications. We recently described an approach to the multiphoton excitation of single molecules that uses a pulse shaper to compress and tailor pulses from an ultrafast broadband laser in order to optimise the brightness and signal-to-background ratio following non-linear excitation. Here we provide a detailed description of the setup and illustrate its use and potential by optimising two-photon fluorescence of a common fluorophore, rhodamine 110, at the single-molecule level. We also show that a DNA oligonucleotide labelled with a fluorescent nucleobase analogue, tC, can be detected using two-photon FCS, whereas one-photon excitation causes rapid photobleaching. The ability to improve the signal-to-background ratio and to reduce the incident power required to attain a given brightness can be applied to the multiphoton excitation of any fluorescent species, from small molecules with low multiphoton cross sections to the brightest nanoparticles.