2024/11/14 by Charles-Antoine Claveau, Michael Bottom, Claveau, Charles-Antoine +27 · 1 citation
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Spectroscopy and Laser Applications #Superconducting and THz Device Technology
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.09185
openalex publication_date 2024/11/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets and ultra-faint galaxies are priority science cases for the coming decades. Here, broadband source flux rates are measured in photons per square meter per hour, imposing extreme demands on detector performance, including dark currents lower than 1 e-/pixel/kilosecond, read noise less than 1 e-/pixel/frame, and large formats. There are currently no infrared detectors that meet these requirements. The University of Hawai'i and industrial partners are developing one promising technology, linear mode avalanche photodiodes (LmAPDs), which is on track to meet the above-mentioned requirements. We present progress towards developing a science-grade, megapixel format linear-mode avalanche photodiode array for low background shortwave (1 - 2.4 um) infrared astronomy. Our latest results show outstanding performance, with dark current \textless 1e-4 electrons/pixel/second and read noise reducing by 30% per volt of bias, reaching less than 1e-/pixel/frame in correlated double-sampling, and able to average down to ∼0.3 e-/pixel/frame when using multiple non-destructive reads. We present some on-sky data as well as comment on prospects for photon number resolving capability.