Detector Development

Our group is helping to build the Wide Field Imager for the European Space Agency's flagship Athena mission. With colleagues at MPE in Germany, we are working to design and test the readout electronics for this novel DEPFET technology camera. Athena will launch in the mid 2030s, and should operate alongside the LISA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. 

With colleagues at MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, we are also working to develop next generation X-ray CCD detectors that will operate at very low noise and high readout speeds, with modest power consumption. This work includes the development of focal plane concepts for future NASA missions and advancing the Single electron Sensitive Readout (SiSeRo) technology, which can, in principle, deliver sub-electron read noise utilizing repetitive non-destructive readout (RNDR).

We are also engaged in the development of machine learning algorithms to better identify and classify events in X-ray imaging detectors, separating bona-fide astrophysical photons from the background of cosmic ray-induced events. Such algorithms may be able to identify and remove a substantial fraction of the background signal missed by traditional filtering methods.