Abstract: Mercury Cadmium Telluride electron initiated avalanche photodiodes demonstrated a breakthrough in lidar active remote sensing technology. A lidar detection system, based on an array of these devices, was integrated and characterized for 2-µm applications. Characterization experiments were focused on evaluating the dark current, gain and responsivity variations with bias voltage. Quantum efficiency and input dynamic range including noise-equivalent-power and maximum detectable power, were calc…