Testing and Validation of the Updated Pixel-Based Non-Linearity Calibration File for WFC3/IR

TL;DR

This paper evaluates a new pixel-based non-linearity correction for WFC3/IR, demonstrating improved linearity at high fluence levels, reduced errors, and negligible impact on flux calibration, leading to better data quality.

Contribution

It introduces and validates a new pixel-based non-linearity correction file that enhances linearity correction accuracy for WFC3/IR data at high fluence levels.

Findings

Improved linearity correction up to 7% at high fluence levels.

Significantly fewer cosmic ray misclassifications during ramp fitting.

Negligible impact on flux calibration standards.

Abstract

The WFC3\IR channel has an innate non-linear response to incident photons, which is corrected for in the calwf3 pipeline with the NLINFILE reference file. The 2009 solution is based on an average polynomial correction for each IR quadrant and is found to be poorly constrained at high fluence levels (e-) approaching the saturation limit. Using a variety of image types, sources, and sample sequences, we test a new pixel-based linearity correction developed by Shenoy et al. (2025). In nearly all cases, the new correction improves the linearity at fluence levels higher than 50,000 e-, with improvements up to 7% for pixels with fluences approaching the saturation limit (80,000 e-) in the last ima reads. The pixel-based solution also significantly decreases the number of cosmic rays erroneously flagged (due to non-linearity correction errors) during ramp fitting in calwf3, leading to improved photometric accuracy in the calibrated flt data and higher signal-to-noise ratios, particularly in Quad 1 (upper-left detector quadrant). Because the new solution tends to make sources brighter, we recalibrate the five HST flux standards used to compute the IR zeropoints and find a negligible impact (0.1-0.2%) on the published values by Calamida et al. (2024), smaller than the RMS dispersion (0.5%) in the observed to synthetic flux ratios for all five flux standards. The new NLINFILE 9au15283i lin.fits was delivered to CRDS in October 2025 and will be used to reprocess all WFC3/IR imaging and grism observations in the MAST archive. An updated reference file a2412448i lin.fits was delivered in February 2026, improving the results at the highest fluence levels by a few tenths of a percent. Please consult the Addendum for details.