V. Letov, A. G. U. Perera, and M. Ershov
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303
H. C. Liu, M. Buchanan, and Z. R. Wasilewski
Institute for Microstructural Sciences, National Research Council, Ottawa K1A 0R6, Canada
The experimental results on nonlinear transient photocurrent behavior in quantum well infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) are presented. When the background photocurrent was less than the transient photocurrent, the QWIPs with small number of QWs revealed a strongly nonlinear behavior. A photocurrent overshoot, the amplitude of which could be over 50% of the steady state photocurrent, in response to a high power step-like infrared illumination, was observed. Numerical simulations reveal that this effect is related to the time dependent nonlinearity of QWIP responsivity due to the redistribution of the electric field in QWIP.
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