Accuracy of the estimation of the power in a pulse of weak luminous flux

The problem of measuring and estimating the accuracy of measurement of the power in a weak pulse of luminous flux detected against a noisy background is considered. A practical algorithm is proposed for measuring the power in a laser signal pulse, and the accuracy of measurement is estimated by taking into account the statistical nature of the process of photodetection on a noisy background. An expression is found for the relative rms error of power measurement in terms of the mean number of background electrons over a period of time equal to the effective pulse duration and the number of photoelectrons. The error does not depend on the quantum efficiency of the photodetector