The autocorrelations above assume that the fluctuations are not due to changes in the fluorescent properties of the particles. However, for the majority of (bio)organic fluorophores—e.g. green fluorescent protein, rhodamine, Cy3 and Alexa Fluor dyes—some fraction of illuminated particles are excited to a triplet state (or other non-radiative decaying states) and then do not emit photons for a characteristic relaxation time . Typically  is on the order of microseconds, which is usually smaller than the dynamics of interest (e.g. ) but large enough to be measured. A multiplicative term is added to the autocorrelation to account for the triplet state. For normal diffusion:
where  is the fraction of particles that have entered the triplet state and  is the corresponding triplet state relaxation time. If the dynamics of interest are much slower than the triplet state relaxation, the short time component of the autocorrelation can simply be truncated and the triplet term is unnecessary.