Optical Fourier processing is a powerful tool that has been leveraged throughout the many disciplines of microscopy to tease information from a sample. This paper describes how a careful examination of the electric field patterns emitted by a single molecule as well as Fourier plane modulation of these patterns can be utilized to obtain much deeper insight about precise physical properties of the single molecule. In particular, the optical field emitted by a single molecule in the far-field is given by the emission pattern of an oscillating electric dipole, which itself contains information that can be extracted by clever design of imaging systems.
(3-6) Although early work at low temperatures relied on the power of high-resolution spectroscopy, the current focus on room temperature measurements and biological applications provides a continuing impetus to extract more and more information from the emitted photons. (2) Critical to the progress in understanding single-molecule behaviors has been theoretical insight to define underlying mechanisms, such as spectral diffusion and other dynamical processes in solids, for example. Even though the detection and spectroscopy of single molecules in condensed phases was first demonstrated 25 years ago, (1) the field has continued to expand in physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science.
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