Meso-photonic Detection with HgCdTe APDs at High Count Rates

The characterization results and analysis from the detection of meso-photonic laser pulses, characterized by zero to tens of photons per pulse, using an in-house developed detector module based on HgCdTe avalanche photodiodes (APDs) are reported. In this detector module, HgCdTe APDs is hybridized to a specifically developed Si CMOS amplifier circuit with a low input noise and high bandwidth of 400 MHz that is shown to be capable of detecting single photon events at APD gain in excess of 100. The use of a Si CMOS amplifier with a high bandwidth is crucial to detect pulsed signals at high rates. With the present detector, this has enabled to detect temporally distinguishable single photon events up to a record rate of 500 MHz on a single solid-state detector. The capacity of the detector to characterize mesoscopic light states was demonstrated on an input state of an average of μ = 1.6 photons using a fitting procedure to extract the timing and amplitude of each pulse. This analog approach to analyze the detection of meso-photonic light is shown to be efficient to estimate the attenuated photon state and to calibrate detector characteristics such as the event detection efficiency (87%), the multiplication gain distribution and corresponding excess noise factor ( F = 1.33) and the timing jitter distribution with a full width half maximum of FWHM= 277 ps.