In a deuterium lamp, the lamp energy from the power source produces an excited deuterium molecule that dissociates into two atoms in the ground state and a photon of radiation. As the excited deuterium relaxes, its quantized energy is distributed between the energy of the photon and the energies of the two atoms. The latter can vary from nearly zero to the energy of the excited molecule. Therefore, the energy of the radiation, which is the difference between the quantized energy of the excited molecule and the kinetic energies of the atoms, can also vary continuously over the same range. Consequently, the emission spectrum is a spectral continuum.