Andrew measured the output voltage noise of photodiodes through an AC coupled pre-amplifier (G=200, 0.7 nV/rtHz) while varying the intensity of white light falling on it. The setup uses a regular 2xAA flashlight (torch) with an incandescent bulb to illuminate the photodiode. The flashlight focus is adjusted to give a non-expanding beam and a 25.4 mm (1") lens is then used to focus the collimated beam down. The total power of light was controlled by trimming it with an iris.

Data Analysis:

Below is the fitting of data to estimate the shotnoise intercept current. Here the fitted function is the quadrature sum of input referred shot noise and dark noise modeled as an equivalent shot noise quanitiy i_snint (called intercept current):

I have included zip file with data and notebook in it as well. With measured shotnoise intercept current of 48 ± 7 uA and 31 ± 7 uA, we are good to go to use these for measuring shot noise with light power in the order of 5.0 mW falling on the photodiodes. With 5.0 mW (~3.9 mA) on each PD, this gives us a clearance of 10dB from the dark noise floor on average for each detector.  Plots with fits are attached below.