Table 1.

Orders of nonlinearity for STED-light-induced fluorescence, photobleaching and photobleaching by STED light on its own, as measured by varying the STED pulse duration over the range 0.1–3 ps.

	STED-light-induced fluorescence (sf)	Bleaching (b)	Bleaching by STED only
ATTO647N	1.52 ± 0.02	1.39 ± 0.02	1.86 ± 0.05
ATTO590	2.15 ± 0.07	1.89 ± 0.06	3.02 ± 0.08
STAR635P	1.73 ± 0.02	1.35 ± 0.02	2.03 ± 0.04
STAR580	1.92 ± 0.05	1.66 ± 0.04	2.40 ± 0.07

Tabulated coefficients are retrieved from line slopes presented in Fig. 2b–d, also shown in Fig. 3b,c. Time-averaged STED power: 10 mW (E_p = 0.125 nJ).