Traceable Measurement of Peak Irradiance and Fluence Rate Enables Accurate Dose Determination of Pulsed Xenon Ultraviolet Disinfection

Abstract Pulsed xenon ultraviolet (PX-UV) disinfection delivers UV energy as microsecond-scale pulses with ultrahigh peak irradiation, creating a need for pulse-resolved dose characterization. Under such conditions, conventional UV dose formulation obscures peak exposure and the pulse temporal structure within an integrated dose, while commonly used radiometers and chemical actinometers are limited by saturation, nonlinear response, spectral mismatch, and temporal averaging. In this study, we addressed these limitations by developing a radiation-hard cerium-doped fiber sensor (Ce-FS) and combining it with broadband chemical actinometric calibration to enable traceable measurements of peak irradiance (IR0, for surface disinfection) and fluence rate (FR0, for air disinfection) under PX-UV irradiation. On this basis, we reformulated the dose to explicitly incorporate IR0 or FR0, pulse duration, and frequency. The Ce-FS showed a wide linear range (3.90–4611.66 mW cm–2), was benchmarked against conventional sensors, and showed good agreement with theoretical predictions. We established dose-response curves for Escherichia coli and bacteriophage MS2 and quantified pulse requirements for 2-log10 inactivation. The kinetic transferability of the pulse-resolved dose was demonstrated through a dose-controlled disinfection trial in a hospital intensive care unit. These results provide a solid basis for rigorous dose determination in PX-UV disinfection, thereby supporting performance evaluation, standardization, and dose-controlled disinfection.