Note: Broadband low-noise photodetector for Pound-Drever-Hall laser stabilization.

The Pound-Drever-Hall laser stabilization technique requires a fast, low-noise photodetector. We present a simple photodetector design that uses a transformer as an intermediary between a photodiode and cascaded low-noise radio-frequency amplifiers. Our implementation using a silicon photodiode yields a detector with 50 MHz bandwidth, gain >10(5) V/A, and input current noise <4 pA/Hz, allowing us to obtain shot-noise-limited performance with low optical power.