80SiO2 composition has been investigated in the temperature range 7–200 K. It has been found that the temperature
behavior of the intensity of intrinsic luminescence does not obey the well-known Mott’s law for intracenter
quenching of luminescence but is adequately described by the empirical Street’s formula. It has been demon-
strated that, with allowance made for the disorder of the atomic structure, the experimental temperature depen-
dence of the luminescence intensity of the glass can be represented as a superposition of Mott’s dependences
for an ensemble of local luminescence centers. The obtained distribution of luminescence centers over the acti-
vation energies of quenching has an asymmetric form with prevailing low-energy states. It has been assumed
that this feature has a general character and, at low temperatures, determines the specificity of the processes of
nonradiative relaxation of the electronic subsystem for many oxide glasses.