In the context of all-weather tracking distant cosmic objects issues, six original schemes of detecting far-infrared radiation are presented here, which approach in their sensitivity to the level that allows their use in photon counting mode. The first one is a modernized version of the Up-converter (with the placement of nonlinear crystal/mixer inside of resonator in a single laser unit) for the transfer of far-infrared photons in the visible range, where the photon counting is possible via PMT or APD. The second scheme of registration far IR is based on the forward bias LED at a current, which is still not enough for the generation of radiation. The experiments allowed to observe photoresponse of such a system for the red border of the internal photoelectric effect. The following three schemes are cryogenic. And the last one is an Up-converter, where instead of the classical mixing on nonlinear crystal is used quantum effect of releasing energy metastable state under the influence of the far-infrared radiation quanta.

Date Published: 18 December 2014
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 9440, International Conference on Micro- and Nano-Electronics 2014, 94400S (18 December 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2180637

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9440:
International Conference on Micro- and Nano-Electronics 2014
Alexander A. Orlikovsky, Editor(s)