External quantum efficiency enhancement by photon recycling with backscatter evasion

Abstract: The nonunity quantum efficiency (QE) in photodiodes (PD) causes deterioration of signal quality in quantum optical experiments due to photocurrent loss as well as the introduction of vacuum fluctuations into the measurement. In this paper, we report that the external QE enhancement of a PD was demonstrated by recycling the reflected photons. The external QE for an InGaAs PD was increased by 0.01 - 0.06 from 0.86 - 0.92 over a wide range of incident angles. Moreover, we confirmed that this technique does not increase backscattered light when the recycled beam is properly misaligned.