Related papers: Precision Astronomy with Imperfect Fully Depleted …
Thick fully depleted CCDs, while enabling wide spectral response, also present challenges in understanding the systematic errors due to 3D charge transport. This 2014 Workshop on Precision Astronomy with Fully Depleted CCDs covered progress…
We review the systematic uncertainties that have plagued attempts to obtain high precision and high accuracy from ground-based photometric measurements using CCDs. We identify two main challenges in breaking through the 1% precision…
Upcoming and current large astronomical survey experiments often seek to constrain cosmological parameters via measurements of subtle effects such as weak lensing, which can only be measured statistically. In these cases, instrumental…
We characterize the response of a novel 250 $\mu$m thick, fully-depleted Skipper Charged-Coupled Device (CCD) to visible/near-infrared light with a focus on potential applications for astronomical observations. We achieve stable,…
In this work we present simple, physics-based models for two effects that have been noted in the fully depleted CCDs that are presently used in the Dark Energy Survey Camera. The first effect is the observation that the point-spread…
Electron Multiplying CCDs (EMCCDs) are used much less often than they might be because of the challenges they offer camera designers more comfortable with the design of slow-scan detector systems. However they offer an entirely new range of…
Future X-ray astrophysics missions will survey large areas of the sky with unparalleled sensitivity, enabled by lightweight, high-resolution optics. These optics inherently produce curved focal surfaces with radii as small as 2 m, requiring…
Conventional CCD detectors have two major disadvantages: they are slow to read out and they suffer from read noise. These problems combine to make high-speed spectroscopy of faint targets the most demanding of astronomical observations. It…
Flat-field images with thick, fully-depleted CCDs exhibit response variations near the edges of the chip and at other locations, such as the regoins bordering mid-frame blooming stop implants. Two possible origins for these repsonse…
Astrophysics demands higher precision in measurements across photometry, spectroscopy, and astrometry. Several science cases necessitate not only precision but also a high level of accuracy. We highlight the challenges involved,…
Radiation damage to space-based Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) detectors creates defects which result in an increasing Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) that causes spurious image trailing. Most of the trailing can be corrected during…
Weak gravitational lensing causes subtle changes in the apparent shapes of galaxies due to the bending of light by the gravity of foreground masses. By measuring the shapes of large numbers of galaxies (millions in recent surveys, up to…
(ABRIDGED) This dissertation concerns the use of CCDs for for X-ray astronomy. Part I of this thesis focuses on the calibration of the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS), one of the two primary focal plane instruments on the Chandra…
The ambitious goals of precision cosmology with wide-field optical surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) demand, as their foundation, precision CCD astronomy. This in turn requires an…
Thick, Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) have recently been explored for applied physics, such as nuclear explosion monitoring, and dark matter detection purposes. When run in fully-depleted mode, these devices are sensitive detectors for…
The brighter-fatter effect affects all CCD sensors to various degrees. Deep-depleted thick sensors are seriously affected and the measurement of galaxy shapes for cosmic shear measurements requires an accurate correction of the effect in…
We characterize the astrometric distortion at the edges of thick, fully-depleted CCDs in the lab using a bench-top simulation of LSST observing. By illuminating an array of forty thousand pinholes (30mu m diameter) at the object plane of a…
Due to the increasing dimension, complexity and cost of the future astronomical surveys, new technologies enabling more compact and simpler systems are required. The development of curved detectors allows to enhance the performances of the…
CCD sensors do not deliver a perfect image of the light they receive. Beyond the well known linear image smearing due to diffusion of charges during their drift towards the pixel wells, non-linear effects are at play in these sensors. We…
The development of sensitive large format imaging arrays for the infrared promises to provide revolutionary capabilities for space astronomy. For example, the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on SIRTF will use four 256 x 256 arrays to provide…