Experimental studies on the charge transfer inefficiency of CCD developed for the soft X-ray imaging telescope Xtend aboard the XRISM satellite

TL;DR

This study investigates the charge transfer inefficiency of a CCD designed for the XRISM satellite's soft X-ray telescope, revealing trap populations, their effects, and a new model accounting for transfer time and area dependencies.

Contribution

It introduces a new CTI model that considers both transfer-time and area dependence, improving understanding of charge trapping in CCDs for space telescopes.

Findings

Identified at least three trap populations with different time constants.

Demonstrated that CTI depends on transfer time and imaging area.

Showed that sacrificial charge reduces flux dependence of CTI.

Abstract

We present experimental studies on the charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) of charge-coupled device (CCD) developed for the soft X-ray imaging telescope, Xtend, aboard the XRISM satellite. The CCD is equipped with a charge injection (CI) capability, in which sacrificial charge is periodically injected to fill the charge traps. By evaluating the re-emission of the trapped charge observed behind the CI rows, we find that there are at least three trap populations with different time constants. The traps with the shortest time constant, which is equivalent to a transfer time of approximately one pixel, are mainly responsible for the trailing charge of an X-ray event seen in the following pixel. A comparison of the trailing charge in two clocking modes reveals that the CTI depends not only on the transfer time but also on the area, namely the imaging or storage area. We construct a new CTI model with taking into account with both transfer-time and area dependence. This model reproduces the data obtained in both clocking modes consistently. We also examine apparent flux dependence of the CTI observed without the CI technique. The higher incident X-ray flux is, the lower the CTI value becomes. It is due to a sacrificial charge effect by another X-ray photon. This effect is found to be negligible when the CI technique is used.