Astronomical Spectroscopy with Skipper CCDs: First Results from a Skipper CCD Focal Plane Prototype at SIFS

Conference · Sat Jun 15 04:00:00 EDT 2024

OSTI ID:2377448

Villalpando, Edgar Marrufo ^[1]; Drlica-Wagner, Alex ^[2]; Roach, Brandon ^[3]; Bonati, Marco ^[4]; Bakshi, Abhishek ^[5]; Campa, Julia ^[6]; Cancelo, Gustavo ^[5]; Cancino, Braulio ^[4]; Chavez, Claudio R. ^[5]; Chierchie, Fernando ^[7]; Estrada, Juan ^[5]; Fernandez Moroni, Guillermo ^[5]; Fraga, Luciano ^[8]; Gaido, Manuel E. ^[9]; Holland, Stephen E. ^[10]; Hur, Rachel ^[11]; Jonas, Michelle ^[5]; Moore, Peter ^[4]; Paolini, Eduardo ^[7]; Plazas Malagón, Andrés A. ^[12] ; Stefanazzi, Leandro ^[5]; Tiffenberg, Javier ^[5]; Treptou, Ken ^[5]; Uemura, Sho ^[5]; Wilcer, Neal ^[5]

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1. Chicago U.; Chicago U., Astron. Astrophys. Ctr.; Chicago U., EFI; Chicago U., KICP
2. Fermilab; Chicago U., Astron. Astrophys. Ctr.; Chicago U., EFI; Chicago U., KICP
3. Chicago U., Astron. Astrophys. Ctr.; Chicago U., EFI; Chicago U., KICP
4. Cerro-Tololo InterAmerican Obs.
5. Fermilab
6. Cordoba U., Spain
7. Buenos Aires, CONICET
8. Itajuba, LNA; Itajuba Federal U.
9. Buenos Aires U.
10. LBL, Berkeley
11. Chicago U.
12. KIPAC, Menlo Park; SLAC

We present the first on-sky results from an ultra-low-readout-noise Skipper CCD focal plane prototype for the SOAR Integral Field Spectrograph (SIFS). The Skipper CCD focal plane consists of four 6k x 1k, 15 $$\mu$$m pixel, fully-depleted, p-channel devices that have been thinned to ~250 $$\mu$$m, backside processed, and treated with an anti-reflective coating. These Skipper CCDs were configured for astronomical spectroscopy, i.e., single-sample readout noise < 4.3 e- rms/pixel, the ability to achieve multi-sample readout noise $$\ll$$ 1 e- rms/pixel, full-well capacities ~40,000-65,000 e-, low dark current and charge transfer inefficiency (~2 x 10$$^{-4}$$ e-/pixel/s and 3.44 x 10$$^{-7}$$, respectively), and an absolute quantum efficiency of $$\gtrsim$$ 80% between 450 nm and 980 nm ($$\gtrsim$$ 90% between 600 nm and 900 nm). We optimized the readout sequence timing to achieve sub-electron noise (~0.5 e- rms/pixel) in a region of 2k x 4k pixels and photon-counting noise (~0.22 e- rms/pixel) in a region of 220 x 4k pixels, each with a readout time of $$\lesssim$$ 17 min. We observed two quasars (HB89 1159+123 and QSO J1621-0042) at redshift z ~ 3.5, two high-redshift galaxy clusters (CL J1001+0220 and SPT-CL J2040-4451), an emission line galaxy at z = 0.3239, a candidate member star of the Bo\"{o}tes II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, and five CALSPEC spectrophotometric standard stars (HD074000, HD60753, HD106252, HD101452, HD200654). We present charge-quantized, photon-counting observations of the quasar HB89 1159+123 and show the detector sensitivity increase for faint spectral features. We demonstrate signal-to-noise performance improvements for SIFS observations in the low-background, readout-noise-dominated regime. We outline scientific studies that will leverage the SIFS-Skipper CCD data and new detector architectures that utilize the Skipper floating gate amplifier with faster readout times.

• Research Organization: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 2377448
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-CONF-24-0305-LDRD-PPD; arXiv:2406.10756; oai:inspirehep.net:2799356
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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