Fundamentals of Photodetection

This book is designed to serve as a comprehensive guide to understanding, designing, and using photodetectors. It provides an in-depth exploration of photodetection principles, devices, and applications across the electromagnetic spectrum from UV to far infrared.

Fundamentals of Photodetection delivers a systematic treatment of photodetection technology, beginning with essential radiometry calculations and detection regimes before advancing through specific detector families. A wide range of conventional and emerging applications of photodetection are illustrated in detail, including photon counting, radionuclide dating, nuclear pulse spectrometry, timing measurements, fiber-optic receivers, nanowire single-photon detectors, image pickup, and Moiré effects applications, to name a few. Throughout the book, special emphasis is placed on noise as the ultimate sensitivity limit in applications. A full chapter is dedicated to coherent detection and other advanced photodetection techniques, such as optical preamplification, non-demolition detection, squeezed-state detection, ultrafast pulse detection, and detectors for LiDAR and quantum communications. The book concludes with comprehensive coverage of image detectors, CCDs, and modulation transfer functions. Each chapter presents the principle of operation, performance parameters, application circuits with design guidance, and noise analysis as the ultimate sensitivity limit. Carefully selected problems distributed throughout the chapters, the text balances theoretical foundations with real-world design considerations, making complex concepts approachable while maintaining technical rigor.

This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students in optoelectronics and engineering, professors teaching PhD seminars in advanced photodetection and noise, and professionals seeking optimal photodetection solutions.

A solutions manual is available for adopting professors.