The asymptotic form of the probability density of sojourn times in randomly changing multistate systems

Recent investigations, motivated by applications to the interpretation of k inetic records of single molecules that randomly change their states, have shown that if the data is from a single state only, the asymptotic form of the probability density for the residence time in that state is Gaussian. I n this paper we extend the formalism to show that when data is available fr om several states the joint density for any subset of them is a multivariat e Gaussian. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.