In previous sections we have dealt with the amplitude of light fields directly and also used the amplitude detector in the Finesse examples. This is the advantage of a mathematical analysis versus experimental tests, in which only light intensity or light power can be measured directly. This section gives the mathematical details for modelling photo detectors.
The intensity of a field impinging on a photo detector is given as the magnitude of the Poynting vector, with the Poynting vector given as [58]
Inserting the electric and magnetic components of a plane wave, we obtain with The response of a photo detector is given by the total flux of effective
radiation4
during the response time of the detector. For example, in a photo diode a photon will release a charge
in the n-p junction. The response time is given by the time it takes for the charge to travel
through the detector (and further time may be taken up in the electronic processing of the
signal). The size of the photodiode and the applied bias voltage determine the travel time of the
charges with typical values of approximately 10 ns. Thus, frequency components faster than
perhaps 100 MHz are not resolved by a standard photodiode. For example, a laser beam with a
wavelength of = 1064 nm has a frequency of
. Thus, the
component is much too fast for the photo detector; instead, it returns the average power
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