International Conference on Space Optics—ICSO 2014 La Caleta, Tenerife, Canary Islands 7–10 October 2014 HgCdTe APDS for space applications

— HgCdTe avalanche photodiode focal plane arrays (FPAs) and single element detectors have been developed for a large scope of photon starved applications. The present communication present the characteristics of our most recent detector developments that opens the horizon for low infrared (IR) photon number detection with high information conservation for imaging, atmospheric lidar and free space telecommunications. In particular, we report on the performance of TEC cooled large area detectors with sensitive diameters ranging from 30- 200 µm, characterised by detector gains of 2- 20 V/µW and noise equivalent input power of 0.1-1 nW for bandwidths ranging from 20 to 400 MHz.