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Abstract

The integral law of thermal radiation by finite-size emitters is studied. Two geometrical characteristics of a radiating body or a cavity, its volume and its boundary area, define two terms in its radiance. The term defined by the volume corresponds to the Stefan– Boltzmann law. The term defined by the boundary area is proportional to the third power of temperature and inversely proportional to emitter’s effective size, which is defined as the ratio of its volume to its boundary area. This generalized law is valid for arbitrary temperature and effective size. It is shown that the cubic temperature contribution is observed in experiments. This term explains the intrinsic uncertainty of the NPL experiment on radiometric determination of the Stefan–Boltzmann constant. It is also quantitatively confirmed by data from the NIST calibration of cryogenic blackbodies. Its relevance to the size of source effect in optical radiometry is proposed and supported by the experiments on thermal emission from nano-heaters.