Radiation tolerant, photon counting, visible and near-IR detectors for space coronagraphs and starshades

Future space missions seeking evidence of life on exoplanets will demand better visible and near-infrared detectors than exist today. The desired detectors are both photon counting (to detect faint exoplanets) and radiation tolerant (for use in space). To address this, a team at NASA Space Flight Center and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is adding photon counting output amplifiers to LBNL's thick, fully depleted, p- channel CCDs and characterizing them for space astrophysics. We are developing two photon counting CCD concepts: (1) hole multiplying CCDs and (2) Skipper CCDs. This paper is the companion article to an SPIE conference poster. It closely follows the poster, although we have expanded the narrative somewhat to make it stand alone.

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