Eur. Phys. J. D 28, 67-77 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2003-00295-1

Quantitative determination of the 3D dipole orientation of single molecules

¹ Laboratoire Aimé Cotton, UPR 3321 du CNRS, bâtiment 505, Campus d'Orsay, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
² Groupe de Chimie du Solide, Physique de la Matière Condensée, UMR 7643 du CNRS, École Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a anne.debarre@lac.u-psud.fr

Received: 16 May 2003
Revised: 22 July 2003
Published online: 2 December 2003

Abstract

Recently, different approaches have been implemented to detect single molecules with an optical dipole out of the sample plane. Principles to solve this problem of general interest have been laid but no detailed analysis has been performed to date. This paper is devoted to a quantitative analysis of the dipole orientation of out of plane molecules that we have detected by amplitude and phase masking of the input beam. The accuracy of the orientation is discussed.