Measurement of the read-out noise of fully depleted thick CCDs

Abstract

Fully depleted thick CCDs have been designed for infrared astronomy, but their low read-out noise of the order of ≈2e- and their considerable mass of ≈5.2 gr, allows novel uses for them in low energy threshold particle detection applications, such as the CONNIE and DAMIC experiments. For both experiments, a reduction of the CCD read-out noise is vital. In this work we present a method to measure the read-out noise coming from electronic and non-electronic sources. The impact of the external electronics on the noise is discussed and its full characterization is presented.