Title: lifetime broadening
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - lifetime broadening
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.08632
Status: current

Definition
Homogeneous line-broadening due to the limited lifetime of energy states involved in a transition.

Note
The lifetime may be limited by the natural lifetime, by collisions, as in pressure broadening, or by anharmonic vibrational interactions as in phonon-phonon collisions in solids.

Related Terms
- Homogeneous line-broadening: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08611
- anharmonic: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08591
- pressure broadening: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08663

Source
- PAC, 2021, 93, 647. 'Glossary of methods and terms used in analytical spectroscopy (IUPAC Recommendations 2019)' on page 753 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2019-0203)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08632/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08632/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08632/xml

Citation: Citation: 'lifetime broadening' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.08632
License: The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms.
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Disclaimer: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using.
Accessed: 2026-05-31T04:06:44+00:00