The Current Role and Future Prospects of Pyroelectric Coherent Radiation Detectors

Theoretical estimates are presented of the limiting performance which might be achieved in the heterodyne mode with currently available pyroelectric materials over a range of intermediate frequencies. Experimental measurements on Triglycine Sulphate detectors have yielded a noise equivalent power at 10.6 μm of 2 × 10⁻¹⁵ WHz⁻¹, at 337 μm of 1 × 10⁻¹² WHz and at 3cm of 8 × 10⁻¹³ WHz⁻¹ with intermediate frequencies of 20 kHz, 800 Hz and 1 kHz respectively.