In radiometry, radiant flux or radiant power is the radiant energy emitted, reflected, transmitted, or received per unit time, and spectral flux or spectral power is the radiant flux per unit frequency or wavelength, depending on whether the spectrum is taken as a function of frequency or of wavelength. The SI unit of radiant flux is the watt (W), one joule per second (), while that of spectral flux in frequency is the watt per hertz () and that of spectral flux in wavelength is the watt per metre ()—commonly the watt per nanometre ().
Mathematical definitions
Radiant flux
Radiant flux, denoted
Phi ('e' for "energetic", to avoid confusion with photometric quantities), is defined as
where
The rate of energy flow through the surface fluctuates at the frequency of the radiation, but radiation detectors only respond to the average rate of flow. This is represented by replacing the Poynting vector with the time average of its norm, giving
where is the time average, and is the angle between and .
Spectral flux
Spectral flux in frequency, denoted Φ
e, ν, is defined as
where is the frequency.
Spectral flux in wavelength, denoted , is defined as
SI radiometry units
See also
Further reading
