A low noise digital readout system for scientific charge coupled devices

Fully depleted thick CCDs have been designed for infrared astronomy, but their low read-out noise of the order of ≈ 2 e ^- and their considerable mass of ≈ 5.2g, allows novel uses for them in low energy threshold particle detection applications, such as the CONNIE and DAMIC experiments. For both experiments, a reduction of the CCD read-out noise...