Characterisation, performance, and operational aspects of the H4RG-15 near infrared detectors for the MOONS instrument

TL;DR

This paper thoroughly characterizes the H4RG-15 near-infrared detectors used in the MOONS spectrograph, focusing on performance, operational temperature effects, and novel electronics development for optimal operation.

Contribution

It presents new insights into the performance of H4RG-15 detectors at various temperatures, introduces a novel cryogenic preamplifier, and details calibration techniques for improved data quality.

Findings

Lower operational temperatures improve detector performance.

The novel cryogenic preamplifier minimizes optical footprint and enhances signal quality.

Effective correction models for persistence and programming issues are developed.

Abstract

MOONS is a multi-object spectrograph for the ESO VLT covering a simultaneous wavelength range of 0.6-1.8 microns using approximately 1000 fibres. It uses four Teledyne Imaging Systems H4RG-15 4K x 4K detectors with 2.5 $\mu$m cut-off material for the two longer wavebands (YJ and H). Since the spectrographs utilize an extremely fast modified Schmidt camera design, then the detectors are situated in the optical beam and hence required the development of a novel 64- channel cryogenic differential cryogenic preamplifier, minimized for optical footprint which will be reported on. We have operated the Engineering Grade H4RG detector at a range of temperatures from 90K to 40K and we will report on the advantages of the lower operational temperature. We have completed a full persistence analysis and are able to model it reasonably well and will offer a correction for it in our data pipeline. We have also configured the detector for use with both unbuffered and buffered outputs and report on the differences in performance between the two output types. We have also seen some programming issues with the detector type and will report on our work-around for this, we will also describe the use of the column-deselect feature and row skipping to minimize the effects of PEDs. We have also measured charge injection per read and report on this, likewise we have also measured the inter-pixel capacitance in different regions of the detector. We will present all these results together with a summary of the complete performance characteristics of this detector family.