Single-electron and single-photon sensitivity with a silicon Skipper CCD

Abstract

We have developed a non-destructive readout system that uses a floating-gate amplifier on a thick, fully depleted charge coupled device (CCD) to achieve ultra-low readout noise of 0.068 e- rms/pix. This is the first time that discrete sub-electron readout noise has been achieved reproducibly over millions of pixels on a stable, large-area detector. This allows the precise counting of the number of electrons in each pixel, ranging from pixels with 0 electrons to more than 1500 electrons. The resulting CCD detector is thus an ultra-sensitive calorimeter. It is also capable of counting single photons in the optical and near-infrared regime. Implementing this innovative non-destructive readout system has a negligible impact on CCD design and fabrication, and there are nearly immediate scientific applications. As a particle detector, this CCD will have unprecedented sensitivity to low-mass dark matter particles and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering, while astronomical applications include future direct imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanets.

References in corpus (22)

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• Direct Detection of Sub-GeV Dark Matter
• A search for light dark matter in XENON10 data
• First Direct Detection Limits on sub-GeV Dark Matter from XENON10
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• Searching for Dark Absorption with Direct Detection Experiments
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• Modulation Effects in Dark Matter-Electron Scattering Experiments
• Direct Search for Low Mass Dark Matter Particles with CCDs
• First Direct-Detection Constraints on eV-Scale Hidden-Photon Dark Matter with DAMIC at SNOLAB
• New limits on Bosonic Dark Matter, Solar Axions, Pauli Exclusion Principle Violation, and Electron Decay from the Majorana Demonstrator
• Results of the engineering run of the Coherent Neutrino Nucleus Interaction Experiment (CONNIE)
• Achieving sub-electron readout noise in Skipper CCDs
• Charge Coupled Devices for detection of coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Crosstalk in multi-output CCDs for LSST

Cited by in corpus (135)

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• SENSEI: Direct-Detection Results on sub-GeV Dark Matter from a New Skipper-CCD
• Light Dark Matter: Models and Constraints
• The Dark Photon
• First Dark Matter Constraints from a SuperCDMS Single-Charge Sensitive Detector
• SENSEI: Direct-Detection Constraints on Sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Shallow Underground Run Using a Prototype Skipper-CCD
• SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Constraints on sub-GeV Dark Matter from a Surface Run
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• Detection of Light Dark Matter With Optical Phonons in Polar Materials
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• Probing sub-GeV Dark Matter-Baryon Scattering with Cosmological Observables
• Direct Detection of Strongly Interacting Sub-GeV Dark Matter via Electron Recoils
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• Directly Detecting MeV-scale Dark Matter via Solar Reflection
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• M${}^3$: A New Muon Missing Momentum Experiment to Probe $(g-2{)}_{\mu }$ and Dark Matter at Fermilab
• First Constraints from DAMIC-M on Sub-GeV Dark-Matter Particles Interacting with Electrons
• Electron Ionization via Dark Matter-Electron Scattering and the Migdal Effect
• Exploring low-energy neutrino physics with the Coherent Neutrino Nucleus Interaction Experiment (CONNIE)
• Results on Low-Mass Weakly Interacting Massive Particles from an 11 kg-day Target Exposure of DAMIC at SNOLAB
• Solar Neutrinos as a Signal and Background in Direct-Detection Experiments Searching for Sub-GeV Dark Matter With Electron Recoils
• EXCESS workshop: Descriptions of rising low-energy spectra
• Determining Dark Matter-Electron Scattering Rates from the Dielectric Function
• Direct Detection of Light Dark Matter and Solar Neutrinos via Color Center Production in Crystals
• SENSEI: First Direct-Detection Results on sub-GeV Dark Matter from SENSEI at SNOLAB
• Searches for light dark matter using condensed matter systems
• Directional Dark Matter Detection in Anisotropic Dirac Materials
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• Exploring New Physics with O(keV) Electron Recoils in Direct Detection Experiments
• Integral X-ray constraints on sub-GeV Dark Matter
• Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering at the European Spallation Source
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• Extended Calculation of Dark Matter-Electron Scattering in Crystal Targets
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• Search for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering at a nuclear reactor with CONNIE 2019 data
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• Thermal Relic Targets with Exponentially Small Couplings
• Hadrophilic Dark Sectors at the Forward Physics Facility
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• Direct Detection of Mirror Matter in Twin Higgs Models
• Freezing In, Heating Up, and Freezing Out: Predictive Nonthermal Dark Matter and Low-Mass Direct Detection
• Charge collection efficiency in back-illuminated Charge-Coupled Devices
• Probing Benchmark Models of Hidden-Sector Dark Matter with DAMIC-M
• Skipper-CCD Sensors for the Oscura Experiment: Requirements and Preliminary Tests
• Resonant Electro-optic Imaging for Microscopy at Nanosecond Resolution
• Dark Matter Induced Power in Quantum Devices
• Precision measurement of Compton scattering in silicon with a skipper CCD for dark matter detection
• Constraints from a many-body method on spin-independent dark matter scattering off electrons using data from germanium and xenon detectors
• SENSEI at SNOLAB: Single-Electron Event Rate and Implications for Dark Matter
• The physics potential of a reactor neutrino experiment with Skipper-CCDs: Searching for new physics with light mediators
• Search for Daily Modulation of MeV Dark Matter Signals with DAMIC-M
• Constraints on Dark Matter-Electron Scattering from Molecular Cloud Ionization
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• Novel approach to assess the impact of the Fano factor on the sensitivity of low-mass dark matter experiments
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• Low-energy reactor neutrino physics with the CONNIE experiment
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• Nanoscale single-electron box with a floating lead for quantum sensing: modelling and device characterization
• The DAMIC-M Low Background Chamber
• Modeling of Impact Ionization and Charge Trapping in SuperCDMS HVeV Detectors
• Dark Fluxes from Accreting Black Holes and Direct Detections
• Effect on Dark Matter Exclusion Limits from New Silicon Photoelectric Absorption Measurements
• First results from a multiplexed and massive instrument with sub-electron noise Skipper-CCDs
• Achieving Single-Electron Sensitivity at Enhanced Speed in Fully-Depleted CCDs with Double-Gate MOSFETs
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