CCCP: a CCD controller for counting photons

Olivier Daigle; Jean-Luc Gach; Christian Guillaume; Simon Lessard; Claude Carignan; Sébastien Blais-Ouellette

doi:10.1117/12.788929

9 July 2008 CCCP: a CCD controller for counting photons

Olivier Daigle, Jean-Luc Gach, Christian Guillaume, Simon Lessard, Claude Carignan, Sébastien Blais-Ouellette

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7014, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II; 70146L (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788929
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2008, Marseille, France

Abstract

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 rate and fast vertical transfer. Using this controller, the dominant source of noise of EMCCDs at low flux level and high frame rate, the Clock Induced Charges, were reduced to 0.001 - 0.0018 electron/pixel/frame (depending of the electron multiplying gain), making efficient photon counting possible. CCCP will be deployed in 2009 on the ESO NTT through the 3D-NTT¹ project and on the SOAR through the BTFI project.

Citation Download Citation

Olivier Daigle, Jean-Luc Gach, Christian Guillaume, Simon Lessard, Claude Carignan, and Sébastien Blais-Ouellette "CCCP: a CCD controller for counting photons", Proc. SPIE 7014, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II, 70146L (9 July 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788929

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