Patent ID: 8546771

Claim:
A method for identifying a photoluminescent material that, after excitation with excitation light, emits emission light having different wavelengths, the method comprising: irradiating the photoluminescent material with the excitation light so that the photoluminescent material emits at least first and second emission light components having different wavelengths, respectively, as a result of the excitation, after turning off the excitation light, detecting temporal intensity curves of the at least first and second emission light components, calculating respective initial intensities of the at least first and second emission light components at a common time, determining at least one intensity parameter by correlating the at least two calculated initial intensities, determining at least one decay parameter value for each emission light component from the detected temporal intensity curves of the at least first and second emission light components and identifying the photoluminescent material based upon the at least one intensity parameter and the at least two decay parameter values.