luminons

Luminons are a proposed class of bosonic quasi-particles that are thought to mediate or accompany luminescent energy transport in certain materials, including organic semiconductors and perovskites. The term derives from lumen, Latin for light, reflecting their role in light-emission processes.

In several theoretical models, luminons arise from strong coupling between electronic excitations (excitons) and lattice vibrations (phonons), forming a composite collective mode with energies in the visible or near-infrared. They may behave as low-mass, long-lived excitations capable of transporting energy with reduced recombination, or as bound states of multiple excitations with distinctive dispersion. They are related to, but distinct from, excitons, phonons, and polaritons.

Formation is proposed to occur under strong optical pumping or in materials with pronounced exciton-phonon coupling, where energy redistributes among electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom to generate a luminon population. Decay channels include radiative emission, nonradiative damping, or dissociation back into excitons and phonons.

Empirical evidence for luminons is indirect. Ultrafast spectroscopic experiments sometimes reveal anomalous energy-transfer dynamics or spectral features not fully explained by standard exciton- or polariton-based models, which some researchers attribute to luminon-like modes. Direct observation would require momentum- and time-resolved measurements capable of tracing coherent quasi-particle propagation.

Potential applications are speculative but include enhanced energy transfer networks in solar materials, advanced light-emitting devices, and new insights into light–matter interactions in complex media. The luminon concept remains controversial and is the subject of ongoing theoretical and experimental work.

See also exciton, phonon, polariton, plasmon, luminescence, energy transfer.