A method for enhancing the efficiency of bolometric photodetectors is presented. The method utilizes the analogy between the process of tunneling of a flux of quantum particles through a potential barrier and the propagation of electromagnetic waves within a nontransparent medium. The calculation results demonstrate that the fraction of radiation absorbed in a detector at a certain IR frequency may be close to unity if one chooses the right thickness and permittivity of the resonator substrate below a thin metal (superconductor) layer.

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Different regimes of electromagnetic signal transmission through heterostructures formed by a sequence of conducting and non-conducting layers are discussed for various ratios between the frequency of radiation and the transport frequency of electron scattering in the conducting layers. Possibility to increase the efficiency of detecting or filtering electromagnetic radiation in a wide range of frequency range (from subTHz to far IR) in such structures is analyzed.

We discuss the detection of broadband radiation in the terahertz frequency range by a bolometric method using heterostructures consisting of a sequence of conducting and dielectric layers of doped and undoped semiconductors (gallium arsenide, germanium). This structure forms a photonic crystal with allowed and forbidden bands (absorption and transmission ranges). By selecting the thicknesses of the conductive and non-conductive layers and the doping levels, it is possible to form spectral intervals of effective absorption, which allows detecting pulses in the frequency range >10^12 Hz with a spectral width of the order of the carrier frequency.