SEPARATION OF PARTITION NOISE FROM GENERATION-RECOMBINATION NOISE IN A 3-TERMINAL QUANTUM-WELL INFRARED PHOTODETECTOR

In this letter, we present results from our systematic study of the lo w frequency noise in an infrared hot-electron transistor. By measuring the correlation between emitter and collector noise currents, we are able to separate the partition noise and the generation-recombination (g-r) noise present in this three terminal device. Through the whole c urrent range of more than two decades, the collector current noise S-I c is always much larger than the cross-spectrum density between emitte r and collector currents S-IeIc. We thus conclude that S-Ic comes most ly from the filtering process. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.