Figure 3.

Events over a pulsed illumination experiment pulse window. Here, the beginning of the $n$-th interpulse window of size $\tau$ is marked by time $t_n$. The FRET labels originally in the state GG (donor and acceptor, respectively, in ground states) are excited by a high-intensity burst (shown by the green) to the state EG (only donor excited) for a very short time ${\delta }_{pulse}$. If FRET occurs, the donor transfers its energy to the acceptor and resides in the ground state leaving the FRET labels in the GE state (only acceptor excited). The acceptor then emits a photon to be registered by the detector at microtime ${\mu }_n$. When using ideal detectors, the microtime is the same as the photon emission time as shown in (a). However, when the timing hardware has jitter (shown in red), a small delay ${ϵ}_n$ is added to the microtime as shown in (b).