function excitation function Bill Bug Daniel Schober Frank Gibson Melanie Courtot A excitation function is a function to inject energy by bombarding a material with energetic particles (e.g., photons) thereby imbuing internal material components such as electrons with additional energy. These internal, 'excited' particles may lead to the rupturing of covalent chemical bonds or may quickly relax back to there unexcited state with an exponential time course thereby locally emitting energy in the form of photons. excitation function ready for release