Evaluation Of High-Speed, 9-12 Micrometer Detectors Using Sub-Nanosecond Pulsed Pb Salt Lasers

Pulsed Pb-salt tunable diode lasers operating at 77°K in the 10 μm spectral region have been used to characterize the response speed of wide bandwidth (3 GHz) photovoltaic HgCdTe infrared detectors. Detector output risetimes and falltimes of the order of 100 picoseconds have been observed. Detector bandwidth vs detector bias has been inferred from the falltime of the detector output at the termination of a short (25 nsec) optical pulse generated by the tunable diode laser.