In other words, LINCam is just a camera. As easy as an ordinal megapixel CCD camera but extended with the timing dimension.

Application

• Fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM)

• Light-sheet 3D FLIM
• Time resolved Raman spectroscopy
• Time-of-Flight measurements

• Low-light observations

Lymphocytes (Jurakt T-cells) were transfected with a monomeric CFP-YFP Lck-biosensor and stimulated by CD3. After fixation cells were immune stained by an anti-GFP antibody, labelled with Atto 647N. The optical sections clearly show the shuttling of Lck positive vesicle between the plasma membrane and an inner compartment (most likely associated with the Golgi complex). Intensity weighted 3D stack of FLIM images of T-cells, 400 × 400 bins, 20 seconds per slice.

Example of lifetime imaging of a lily of the valley slice sample. The intensity image 

(a) is a histogram of the positions of acquired photons. Lifetime analysis reveals four 

lifetime components: τ1 = 0,19; τ2 = 0,67; τ3 = 1,95 and τ4 = 3,75 ns. The resulting 

overlay image 

(b) of the intensity image and average lifetime is shown.

Glycolytic Oscillations in Eukaryotic Cells Followed by NADH Imaging

By using the metabolite NADH as an intrinsic marker for glycolysis, the dynamics of individual cells can be monitored and their interactions studied.

Monitoring intrinsic energy metabolism over long periods of time allows the study of cellular communication between cell populations. By using the metabolite NADH as an intrinsic marker for glycolysis, the dynamics of individual cells can be monitored and their interactions studied. Glucose consumption by glycolysis and alcoholic fermentation leads to the production of metabolites, some of which are released. Coupling between yeast cells depends on the release and sensing of the messenger acetaldehyde, which diffuses through the extracellular medium. Yeast cells are well known for the oscillatory behavior of the glycolysis and their metabolic organization. The exchange of messenger molecules can result in waves and synchronized patterns in which all cells oscillate in concert. Essential to this study is an ultrasensitive detection system that allows excitation of the weak fluorescence of NADH by low-intensity UV light.

Measurement induced entanglement of stored ions

Typically single photon emitters show an emission behaviour that is called anti-bunching. This means that the probability to detect a second photon after detection a first one is suppressed. By using two of this single photon emitters in form of trapped calcium ions, it is possible to create a ligh source consisting of two single calcium ions.

If the scattered light does not contain information of its creating ion (achieved by measuring the far-field), some interesting properties of this light source can be observed. As described in fig. 1, the two ion system can be described by the Dicke-Basis (Wolf et al. 2020)*. Interestingly the anti symmetric state |a> does not couple to the laser field. The system now shows behaviour of typical single photon emitters, an anti-bunched photon statistics, if it driven in the symmetric decay channel. If a photon is emitted in a way that the system ends up in the anti-symmetric case, it becomes invisible for the driving laser and a second photon has to be emitted to bring the system back t0 the ground state. Such behaviour of the emission of two photons in a short period of time is called bunching and can be found normally only for chaotic or thermal light sources.

Interestingly the decay channel can be chosen by the angle of investigation of the trapped ion crystal, deliviring a light source whose emission statistics can be tuned from non-classical anti-bunching to classical bunching and everything in between by just changing the angle under which it is observed.