Characterization of a CCD for Applications in Particle Detection

SOFO HARO, MIGUEL; FERNANDEZ MORONI, GUILLERMO; BERTOU, XAVIER; BLOSTEIN, JUAN JERÓNIMO; CANCELO, GUSTAVO; ESTRADA, JUAN; GOMEZ BERISSO, MARIANO; SUAREZ, SERGIO; TIFFENBERG, JAVIER

Bariloche

Workshop; International School on the Effects of Radiation on Embedded Systems for Space Applications; 2014

Instituto Balseiro

Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) have been extensively used as light sensors from the visible range to the near infrared region. CCDs developed during the last decade can be characterized by a read-out noise of few electrons, masses of up to 5gr, and a spatial resolution of about 15μm, making possible to use them for low energy particle detection. Two particular new applications are the DAMIC and CONNIE experiments. DAMIC uses the silicon of the CCDs as target material for direct dark matter detection, while CONNIE aims to detect coherent interactions from neutrinos produced by a nuclear power plant. In both experiments, knowing the ionizing efficiency of low energy nuclear recoils is crucial. Our research group is planning to measure this efficiency colliding low energy silicon ions into a CCD. In this work, the read-out system of a CCD operating at the CAB is presented, together with its characterization: gain, noise, linearity, photon transfer curve and the response of the CCD to different sources of radiation.