Power-law statistics of intermittent photoluminescence in single semiconductor nanocrystals

A physical model is proposed for a single CdSe nanocrystal coated with a ZnS shell which can explain the power-law statistics of its experimentally observed intermittent photoluminescence. If the localized electron-hole pairs (excitons) form in the nanocrystal, this suggestion alone will suffice to explain why the on-time distribution follows the law close to $t^{-1.5}$ found experimentally.