Related papers: Photon counting strategies with low light level CC…
Recently, low light level charge coupled devices (L3CCDs) capable of on-chip gain have been developed, leading to sub-electron effective readout noise, allowing for the detection of single photon events. Optical interferometry usually…
Theoretically, L3CCDs are perfect photon counting devices promising high quantum efficiency ($\sim$90%) and sub-electron readout noise ($\sigma$<0.1 e-). We discuss how a back-thinned 512x512 frame-transfer L3CCD (CCD97) camera operating in…
Thorough numerical simulations were run to test the performance of three processing methods of the data coming out from an electron multiplying charge coupled device (EMCCD), or low light level charge coupled device (L3CCD), operated at…
A radically new CCD development by Marconi Applied Technologies has enabled substantial internal gain within the CCD before the signal reaches the output amplifier. With reasonably high gain, sub-electron readout noise levels are achieved…
A multi-imaging strategy is proposed and experimentally tested to improve the accuracy of photon counting with an electron multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD), by taking into account the random nature of its on-chip gain and the…
The photon counting imaging paradigm in the visible and the infrared comes from the very small energy carried by a single photon at these wavelengths. Usually to detect photons the photoelectric effect is used. It converts a photon to a…
Photon counting is a mode of processing astronomical observations of low-signal targets that have been observed using an electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD). In photon counting, the EMCCD amplifies the signal, and a…
EMCCDs are efficient imaging devices for low surface brightness UV astronomy from space. The large amplification allows photon counting, the detection of events versus non-events. This paper provides the statistics of the observation…
This paper focuses on the conversion gain (CG) of pixels implementing pinned photo-diodes (PPD) and in-pixel voltage follower in standard CMOS image sensor (CIS) process. An overview of the CG expression and its impact on the noise…
The design of electron multiplying CCD cameras require a very different approach from that appropriate for slow scan CCD operation. This paper describes the main problems in using electron multiplying CCDs for high-speed, photon counting…
We demonstrate accurate phase measurement from low photon level interference data using a constrained optimization method that takes into account the expected redundancy in the unknown phase function. This approach is shown to have…
CCCP, a CCD Controller for Counting Photons, is presented. This new controller uses a totally new clocking architecture and allows to drive the CCD in a novel way. Its design is optimized for the driving of EMCCDs at up to 20MHz of pixel…
Low-light-level imaging techniques have application in many diverse fields, ranging from biological sciences to security. We demonstrate a single-photon imaging system based on a time-gated inten- sified CCD (ICCD) camera in which the image…
The paper presents a system for measuring photon statistics and photon timing in the few-photon regime down to the single-photon level. The measurement system is based on superconducting nanowire single photon detectors and a…
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…
Readout noise is a critical parameter for characterizing the performance of charge-coupled devices (CCDs), which can be greatly reduced by the correlated double sampling (CDS) circuit. However, conventional CDS circuit inevitably introduces…
The usage of digital content (photos and videos) in a variety of applications has increased due to the popularity of multimedia devices. These uses include advertising campaigns, educational resources, and social networking platforms. There…
We have developed a new method to correct dark current at relatively high temperatures for Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) images when dark frames cannot be obtained on the telescope. For images taken with the Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3)…
The EMCCD is a CCD type that delivers fast readout and negligible detector noise, making it an ideal detector for high frame rate applications. Because of the very low detector noise, this detector can potentially count single photons.…
Low-light photography produces images with low signal-to-noise ratios due to limited photons. In such conditions, common approximations like the Gaussian noise model fall short, and many denoising techniques fail to remove noise…