Radiative energy transfer I. General equations

A set of equations is derived which makes possible to study the radiative energy transfer process whereby the photons emitted by the energy donor are absorbed by the energy acceptor and so increase the efficiency of the overall energy transfer. It is shown that the coefficients describing the radiative transfer which appear in the expressions for the intensities of the energy donor and the energy acceptor are not the same, due to the fact that part of the fluorescence absorbed by the acceptor comes from radiation which is not detected as donor emission when there is no acceptor present. The general equations derived are applied to two particular cases commonly considered: measurements in reflection, where the fluorescence emission is observed from the same face of the absorption and measurements in transmission where the fluorescence emission is observed from the opposite face of the cell.