Characterization of a Longwave HgCdTe GeoSnap Detector

TL;DR

This paper characterizes a new longwave HgCdTe GeoSnap detector, detailing its key properties, noise characteristics, and pixel defects, to support its deployment in ground-based infrared astronomy.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of a GeoSnap detector's performance metrics, noise behavior, and defect patterns, informing future detector development and deployment.

Findings

Well-depth of 2.75 million electrons per pixel

Read noise of 360 e-/pix and dark current of 330,000 e-/s/pix at 45 K

Quantum efficiency of approximately 80% at 10.6 microns

Abstract

New longwave HgCdTe detectors are critical to upcoming plans for ground-based infrared astronomy. These detectors, with fast-readouts and deep well-depths, will be key components of extremely large telescope instruments and therefore must be well understood prior to deployment. We analyze one such HgCdTe detector, a Teledyne Imaging Sensors GeoSnap, at the University of Michigan. We find that the properties of the GeoSnap are consistent with expectations from analysis of past devices. The GeoSnap has a well-depth of 2.75 million electrons per pixel, a read noise of 360 e-/pix, and a dark current of 330,000 e-/s/pix at 45 K. The device experiences 1/f noise which can be mitigated relative to half-well shot noise with modest frequency image differencing. The GeoSnap's quantum efficiency is calculated to be 79.7 +- 8.3 % at 10.6 microns. Although the GeoSnap's bad pixel fraction, on the order of 3%, is consistent with other GeoSnap devices, close to a third of the bad pixels in this detector are clustered in a series of 31 "leopard" spots spread across the detector plane. We report these properties and identify additional analyses that will be performed on future GeoSnap detectors.