Title: spectral responsivity
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - spectral responsivity
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.S05829
Status: current

Definition
The spectral output quantity of a system such as a photomultiplier, diode array, photoimaging device, or biological unit divided by the spectral irradiance \(s(\lambda) = \frac{\rm{d}y\left(\lambda \right)}{\rm{d}E\left(\lambda \right)}\), simplified expression: \(s(\lambda) = \frac{Y_{\lambda }}{E_{\lambda }}\), where \(Y_{\lambda }\) is the magnitude of the output signal for irradiation at wavelength \(\lambda \) and \(E_{\lambda }\) is the spectral irradiance of the parallel and perpendicular incident beam at the same wavelength.

Related Terms
- irradiation: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/I03255
- photoimaging: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/I02944
- responsivity: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/R05347
- spectral irradiance: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/S05817
- wavelength: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/W06659

Sources
- PAC, 1995, 67, 1745. 'Nomenclature, symbols, units and their usage in spectrochemical analysis-XI. Detection of radiation (IUPAC Recommendations 1995)' on page 1749 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199567101745)
- PAC, 1996, 68, 2223. 'Glossary of terms used in photochemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 1996)' on page 2276 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199668122223)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/S05829/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/S05829/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/S05829/xml

Citation: Citation: 'spectral responsivity' 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.S05829
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Accessed: 2026-01-13T01:57:44+00:00