Open AccessWhen shot-noise-limited photodetectors disobey Poisson statistics
Author(s) -
Jacob Rabinowitz,
Mohsen Rezaei,
Min Su Park,
Chee Leong Tan,
M. P. Ulmer,
Hooman Mohseni
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
optics letters
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.524
H-Index - 272
eISSN - 1539-4794
pISSN - 0146-9592
DOI - 10.1364/ol.389908
Subject(s) - shot noise , photodetector , noise (video) , cmos , poisson distribution , optics , optoelectronics , computer science , physics , artificial intelligence , statistics , detector , mathematics , image (mathematics)
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.