We report on the residence times of capillary waves above a given height h
and on the typical waiting time in between such fluctuations. The measurements
were made on phase separated colloid-polymer systems by laser scanning confocal
microscopy. Due to the Brownian character of the process, the stochastics vary
with the chosen measurement interval Δt. In experiments, the discrete
scanning times are a practical cutoff and we are able to measure the waiting
time as a function of this cutoff. The measurement interval dependence of the
observed waiting and residence times turns out to be solely determined by the
time dependent height-height correlation function g(t). We find excellent
agreement with the theory presented here along with the experiments.Comment: 5 figure