The so-called ergodic theorem is a fundamental scientific principle: it says that all the individual particles in physical systems as “chaotic” behavior as the entire ensemble – from individual behavior can be so closed to the whole. Although this principle has far-reaching consequences, there has been a pure of thought.
Professor Christopher Bräuchle and his team at the Department of Chemistry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München have now managed jointly with Professor Jörg Kärger and its Working Group (University of Leipzig) for the first time, by measuring the diffusion behavior of single molecules and whole molecule ensembles in the same system the ergodic theorem to confirm experimentally. This helped the researchers at the LMU fluorescent molecules, the “light traces” the path of each individual molecule traces exactly, while the Leipzig group also studied the corresponding ensemble of molecules. “Now it is very interesting to examine more precisely systems that do not behave according to the Ergodentheorems and find out the reasons why this is not the case,” says Bräuchle.