03641 IUPAC Gold Book - luminescence 10.1351/goldbook.L03641 L03641 current 1 Spontaneous emission of radiation from an electronically or vibrationally excited species not in thermal equilibrium with its environment. Spontaneous emission https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/S05886 bioluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/B00659 chemiluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/C01045 electro-generated chemiluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/E01966 fluorescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/F02453 phosphorescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/P04569 photoluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/P04623 radioluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/R05111 sonoluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/S05767 thermoluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/T06325 triboluminescence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/T06499 PAC, 1994, 66, 2513. 'Nomenclature for radioanalytical chemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 1994)' on page 2522 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199466122513) PAC, 1996, 68, 2223. 'Glossary of terms used in photochemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 1996)' on page 2252 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199668122223) Orange Book, 2nd ed., p. 184 (https://media.iupac.org/publications/analytical_compendium/) PAC, 1990, 62, 2167. 'Glossary of atmospheric chemistry terms (Recommendations 1990)' on page 2200 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199062112167) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/L03641/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/L03641/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/L03641/plain Citation: 'luminescence' 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.L03641 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. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . 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. 2026-05-01T16:24:49+00:00