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Main Authors: Lin, Kenneth W., Bault, Abby, Karcher, Armin, Guy, Julien, Holland, Stephen E., Kolbe, William F., Nugent, Peter E.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07930
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author Lin, Kenneth W.
Bault, Abby
Karcher, Armin
Guy, Julien
Holland, Stephen E.
Kolbe, William F.
Nugent, Peter E.
author_facet Lin, Kenneth W.
Bault, Abby
Karcher, Armin
Guy, Julien
Holland, Stephen E.
Kolbe, William F.
Nugent, Peter E.
contents Multiple-Amplifier Sensing (MAS) charge-coupled devices (CCDs) have recently been shown to be promising silicon detectors that meet noise sensitivity requirements for next generation Stage-5 spectroscopic surveys and potentially, future space-based imaging of extremely faint objects on missions such as the Habitable Worlds Observatory. Building upon the capability of the Skipper CCD to achieve deeply sub-electron noise floors, MAS CCDs utilize multiple floating-gate amplifiers along the serial register to increase the readout speed by a factor of the number of output nodes compared to a Skipper CCD. We introduce and experimentally demonstrate on a 16-channel prototype device new readout techniques that exploit the MAS CCD's floating-gate amplifiers to optimize the correlated double sampling (CDS) by resetting once per line instead of once per pixel. With this new mode, we find an optimal filter to subtract the noise from the signal during read out. We also take advantage of the MAS CCD's structure to tune the read time by independently changing integration times for the signal and reference level. Together with optimal weighted averaging of the 16 outputs, these approaches enable us to reach a sub-electron noise of 0.9 e$^-$ rms pix$^{-1}$ at 19 $μ$s pix$^{-1}$ for a single charge measurement per pixel - simultaneously giving a 30% faster readout time and 10% lower read noise compared to performance previously evaluated without these techniques.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_07930
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimizing Charge-coupled Device Readout Enabled by the Floating-Gate Amplifier
Lin, Kenneth W.
Bault, Abby
Karcher, Armin
Guy, Julien
Holland, Stephen E.
Kolbe, William F.
Nugent, Peter E.
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Detectors
Multiple-Amplifier Sensing (MAS) charge-coupled devices (CCDs) have recently been shown to be promising silicon detectors that meet noise sensitivity requirements for next generation Stage-5 spectroscopic surveys and potentially, future space-based imaging of extremely faint objects on missions such as the Habitable Worlds Observatory. Building upon the capability of the Skipper CCD to achieve deeply sub-electron noise floors, MAS CCDs utilize multiple floating-gate amplifiers along the serial register to increase the readout speed by a factor of the number of output nodes compared to a Skipper CCD. We introduce and experimentally demonstrate on a 16-channel prototype device new readout techniques that exploit the MAS CCD's floating-gate amplifiers to optimize the correlated double sampling (CDS) by resetting once per line instead of once per pixel. With this new mode, we find an optimal filter to subtract the noise from the signal during read out. We also take advantage of the MAS CCD's structure to tune the read time by independently changing integration times for the signal and reference level. Together with optimal weighted averaging of the 16 outputs, these approaches enable us to reach a sub-electron noise of 0.9 e$^-$ rms pix$^{-1}$ at 19 $μ$s pix$^{-1}$ for a single charge measurement per pixel - simultaneously giving a 30% faster readout time and 10% lower read noise compared to performance previously evaluated without these techniques.
title Optimizing Charge-coupled Device Readout Enabled by the Floating-Gate Amplifier
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Detectors
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07930