Statistics of electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices
Abstract
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 process, the photon-counting process, the amplification, process, and the compression. The expression for the signal-to-noise of photon counting is written in terms of the polygamma function. The optimal exposure time is a function of the clock-induced charge. The exact distribution of amplification process is a simple-to-compute powered matrix. The optimal cutoff for comparing to the read noise is close to a strong function of the read noise and a weak function of the electron-multiplying gain and photon rate. A formula gives the expected compression rate.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.08155,
title = {Statistics of electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices},
author = {Brian M. Sutin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.08155},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
18 pages, 5 figures. later draft accepted to JATIS