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A B S T R A C TWe observed nine primary transits of the hot Jupiter TrES-3b in several optical and near-UV photometric bands from 2009 June to 2012 April in an attempt to detect its magnetic field. Vidotto, Jardine and Helling suggest that the magnetic field of TrES-3b can be constrained if its near-UV light curve shows an early ingress compared to its optical light curve, while its egress remains unaffected. Predicted magnetic field strengths of Jupiter-like planets should range between 8 G and 30 G. Using these magnetic field values and an assumed B * of 100 G, the Vidotto et al. method predicts a timing difference of 5-11 min. We did not detect an early ingress in our three nights of near-UV observations, despite an average cadence of 68 s and an average photometric precision of 3.7 mmag. However, we determined an upper limit of TrES-3b's magnetic field strength to range between 0.013 and 1.3 G (for a 1-100 G magnetic field strength range for the host star, TrES-3) using a timing difference of 138 s derived from the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. To verify our results of an abnormally small magnetic field strength for TrES-3b and to further constrain the techniques of Vidotto et al., we propose future observations of TrES-3b with other platforms capable of achieving a shorter near-UV cadence. We also present a refinement of the physical parameters of TrES-3b, an updated ephemeris and its first published near-UV light curve. We find that the near-UV planetary radius of R p = 1.386 +0.248 −0.144 R Jup is consistent with the planet's optical radius.

GaAs quantum well infrared detectors with peak responsivity at 8.2 μm and significant response beyond 10 μm have been demonstrated with detectivities of 4×1011 cm (Hz)1/2 /W at 6 K; this detectivity is the highest reported for a quantum well detector. The detectors comprised 50 GaAs quantum wells of width 40 Å with an average Si doping density of 1×1018 cm−3 separated by 280-Å barriers of Al0.28Ga0.72As. In this design, the state to which electrons are excited by infrared absorption and from which they are subsequently collected lies in the continuum above the energy of the Al0.28Ga0.72As conduction-band minimum. The maximum detector responsivity was mesured to be 0.34 A/W. The device dark current density is 5.5×10−6 A/cm2 with the detector biased for maximum detectivity (3.5 V), and the dark current remains constant with increasing temperature up to 50 K. The detector noise current was observed to be a constant fraction (70%) of the shot noise down to noise currents of 10−14 A/(Hz)1/2. A theoretical model for the dark conduction process in a quantum well detector has been developed which successfully predicts the observed dark current noise.

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The expression for the ratio between the noise current and full shot noise contained in our recent paper [J. Appl. Phys. 67, 7608 (1990)] is based entirely on standard generation-recombination noise theory, and does not represent a more complex model as Beck suggests [J. Appl. Phys. 69, xxx (1991)]. The equations presented by Beck contain errors, but once these errors are corrected, his equations and ours yield the same quantitative predictions.

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