Recent research has highlighted the opportunity to use entangled photon pairs to probe fluorescently labelled biological samples. A pioneering publication from 2023 showed for example that it is possible to probe photosynthetic LH2 molecules in the single photon regime. This is a key innovation in the field as there still remain important unanswered questions of how photosensitive molecules are probed as the light used for probing might have unintended effects on the molecule itself. We have recently implemented the same approach in the labs at the University of Glasgow and seen that probing LH2 molecules and others can be very efficient, with measurement times of 1 second or less for a full fluorescence lifetime curve. An important development is the realisation that one can then use a low-cost and simple CW laser to pump a crystal and obtain entangled photon pairs. The entanglement can then be used to remotely (nonlocally at the heralding photon) select the frequency of the excitation photon. Similarly, the heralding photon provides the timing information of the excitation photon. The end result is a CW laser system that can achieve frequency tunable and sub-picosecond lifetime resolution with a total microscope cost that is 10x less than a standard (classical) system. But it also provides the capability to probe biological systems, one photon at a time i.e. at the lowest possible photon density. There are various research directions that will be pursued including: single photon probing of photoactivated drugs for cancer and light harvesting complexes; entangled photon probing of two-photon emitters; ghost imaging approaches with entangled photons for fully space-resolved, fluorescence lifetime bio-imaging.

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