When shot-noise-limited photodetectors disobey Poisson statistics
Abstract
Photodetectors with internal gain are of great interest for imaging applications, since internal gain reduces the effective noise of readout electronics. High-gain photodetectors have been demonstrated, but only individually rather than as a full array in a camera. Consequently, there has been little investigation of the interaction between camera complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) electronics and the slow response time that high-gain photodetectors often exhibit. Here we show that this interaction filters shot noise and causes noise statistics to differ from the common Poisson distribution. As an example, we investigate a 320 × 256 array of InGaAs/InP high-gain phototransistors bonded to a CMOS readout chip. We demonstrate the filtering effects and discuss their consequences, including new (to the best of our knowledge) methods for extracting gain and increasing dynamic range.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- May 27, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1364/ol.389908
Entities
People
- Chee Leong Tan
- Hooman Mohseni
- Jacob Rabinowitz
- Melville Ulmer
- Min-su Park
- Mohsen Rezaei
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- W. M. Keck Foundation