title: Measuring fluorescence polarization with a dichrometer.
abstract: A method for obtaining fluorescence polarization data from an instrument designed to measure circular and linear dichroism is compared with a previously reported approach. The new method places a polarizer between the sample and a detector mounted perpendicular to the direction of the incident beam and results in determination of the fluorescence polarization ratio, whereas the previous method does not use a polarizer and yields the fluorescence anisotropy. A similar analysis with the detector located axially with the excitation beam demonstrates that there is no frequency modulated signal due to fluorescence polarization in the absence of a polarizer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Physics, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, United States; Department of Biology, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, United States; Department of Physics, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, United States. Electronic address: jsutherland@augusta.edu.
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Sutherland
mesh_terms: D002942:Circular Dichroism / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D005454:Fluorescence Polarization / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Anisotropy; Circular dichroism; Dichrometer; Linear dichroism; Photoelastic modulator; Polarization ratio