Research on Time Jitter of GaAs Photoconductive Semiconductor Switches in the Negative Differential Mobility Region

摘要： Time jitter of GaAs photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSS) is investigated at an optical excitation of 1053 nm wavelength and 500 ps pulse duration. The experimental results indicate that the time jitter of the GaAs PCSS exhibits a nonmonotonic variation in negative differential mobility (NDM) region. All of these time jitters are lower than the 4% of the rise time of the switching waveform. The optimum time jitter of ~15 ps is achieved at the onset of the NDM region. The theoretical relationship between the optical excitation parameters, the bias electric field and the time jitter of the GaAs PCSS are built up. The nonmonotonic behavior of the time jitter with electric field is attributed to the instability of the relative fluctuation of drift velocity caused by inter-valley transition of carriers in GaAs.