activity
20242026
collaborators

5 papers

astro-ph.IM2026

In situ cryogenic characterization of proton damage in thick p-channel skipper CCDs

Brandon M. Roach, Brenda Cervantes Vergara, Alex Drlica-Wagner +14

Skipper charge-coupled devices (CCDs) are an offshoot of standard silicon pixel detectors and are capable of performing repeated non-destructive charge measurements, enabling deepl…

astro-ph.IM2026

X-ray characterization of fully-depleted p-channel Skipper-CCDs for the DarkNESS mission

Phoenix Alpine, Ana M. Botti, Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara +11

The Dark matter Nanosatellite Equipped with Skipper Sensors (DarkNESS) mission is a 6U CubeSat designed to search for X-ray lines from decaying dark matter using Skipper-CCDs. Thic…

physics.ins-det2025

A compact, low-power epithermal neutron counter for lunar water detection

Julian Cuevas-Zepeda, Phoenix Alpine, Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara +7

The detection and characterization of lunar water are critical for enabling sustainable human and robotic exploration of the Moon. Orbital neutron spectrometers, such as instrument…

astro-ph.IM2025

DarkNESS: A skipper-CCD NanoSatellite for Dark Matter Searches

Phoenix Alpine, Samriddhi Bhatia, Ana M. Botti +16

The Dark matter Nanosatellite Equipped with Skipper Sensors (DarkNESS) deploys a recently developed skipper-CCD architecture with sub-electron readout noise in low Earth orbit (LEO…

astro-ph.IM2024

DarkNESS: developing a skipper-CCD instrument to search for Dark Matter from Low Earth Orbit

Phoenix Alpine, Samriddhi Bhatia, Fernando Chierchie +8

The DarkNESS (Dark Matter Nano-satellite Equipped with Skipper Sensors) mission aims to deploy a skipper-CCD CubeSat Observatory to search for dark matter (DM) from Low Earth Orbit…