Room temperature photoluminescence resulting from radiative interband recombination (1.1 mu m) in c-Si excited by of XeCl or N-2 laser pulses is studied experimentally and theoretically. Numerical simulations show that the quantum yield of PL of passivated c-Si wafers excited with the energy density 1-3 mJ/cm(2) reaches a maximal value of 3% for c-Si wafer with the bulk lifetime of 2.5 ms. Simulated transients of PL fit very well to the experimentally observed ones, and allow an evaluation of the density of surface non-radiative defects. The exponential part of the PL transient is sensitive to the surface defect densities in the range from 10(8) to 10(12) cm(-2). The total yield of PL is practically reciprocal to the density of surface defects in the range from 10(10) to 10(14) cm(-2). These inferences have been used to obtain the densities of surface non-radiative defects for c-Si wafers irradiated with the laser pulses of energy densities near the melting threshold of c-Si.