Quantum limits of position-sensitive photodiodes

The split photodiode and the lateral effect photodiode are two popular detectors for measuring beam displacement. For small displacements of a Gaussian beam, which is the case of interest here, they are often seen as equivalent and used interchangeably, giving a signal proportional to the displacement. We show theoretically and experimentally that in the limit of low technical noise, where the signal to noise ratio is dominated by the shot noise of the light, the lateral effect photodiode produces a better signal to noise ratio than the split photodiode, owing to its optimum spatial detector response. This quantum advantage can be practically exploited in spite of the intrinsic thermal noise of the lateral effect photodiode.