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# 1 Typical detector parameters.

TUM–HEP–383/00

MPI–PhT/2000-29

A Comparison of the Physics Potential of Future Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation ExperimentsWork supported by ”Sonderforschungsbereich 375 für Astro-Teilchenphysik” der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft.

K. Dick111Email: Karin.Dick@physik.tu-muenchen.de22footnotemark: 2, M. Freund333Email: Martin.Freund@physik.tu-muenchen.de, P. Huber444Email: Patrick.Huber@physik.tu–muenchen.de and M. Lindner555Email: Manfred.Lindner@physik.tu–muenchen.de

11footnotemark: 1

,33footnotemark: 3,44footnotemark: 4,55footnotemark: 5Theoretische Physik, Physik Department, Technische Universität München,

James–Franck–Strasse, D–85748 Garching, Germany

22footnotemark: 2

Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Postfach 401212, D–80805 München, Germany

> Abstract
>
> We compare the generic physics potential of various combinations of conventional Wide Band or Neutrino Factory Beams with different detectors to determine several oscillation parameters in long baseline experiments. For each combination of beam and detector we show the precision which can be obtained for the leading oscillation parameters $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{23}`$. Furthermore we show the sensitivity to $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ and the range in $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ for which the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ can be extracted via matter effects. The results suggest that existing conventional Wide Band Beam and detector technology can be used to considerably improve the precision of neutrino properties until a neutrino factory will be built.

Recent studies of neutrino factories as powerful neutrino sources have shown that precision measurements of neutrino masses and mixings are possible in the future . The development of a neutrino factory includes however challenging technological issues and the development will certainly take some time. It is therefore of interest what can be achieved meanwhile in comparison by using conventional neutrino beams. Such improved conventional experiments will lead to a better knowledge of neutrino parameters, which might be considered as a useful step to simply bridge the time until a neutrino factory will be operating. We will however show in this paper that conventional setups may be able to compete in some aspects with the long baseline neutrino oscillation program of neutrino factories. The results of such intermediate experiments would also be important since they affect the optimal strategies for neutrino factories. This applies especially to the measurement of CP-violation at neutrino factories, where further advance information on the mixing parameters (especially $`\theta _{13}`$) would be very important . We perform therefore in this paper a global comparison of the generic physics potential of several experimental setups and we present the resulting precision of the leading oscillation parameters ($`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ and $`\theta _{23}`$) as well as the sensitivity to the sub-leading parameters ($`\theta _{13}`$ and the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$). Our analysis includes energy thresholds and resolutions and we show the dependence on these parameters. Details of the formalism which is used to derive the current results can be found in earlier publications .

The experimental setups considered in this study include two different beam types, namely

$``$conventional Wide Band Beams
$``$neutrino factory beams

which are assumed to point at three different types of detectors, specifically

$``$magnetized iron detectors
$``$large water or ice Cherenkov detectors (“neutrino-telescopes”)
$``$ring imaging water Cherenkov detectors

located at large distance on the surface of the earth. We consider thus very long baselines up to 11200 km and we include therefore the MSW matter effects  with the full earth density profile . We study only the detection of muons which are produced by muon neutrinos, since electrons and taus are in general experimentally more difficult. Adding electron and/or tau channels would of course affect the analysis. The generic physics potential of the detectors depends for the considered measurements then in general primarily on three parameters, namely the energy threshold for muon detection, the energy resolution and of course the detector mass. To characterize typical detector concepts via these three parameters is of course a rather simplified approximation of a real detector, but it permits a simple and effective evaluation and comparison of the generic physics potential of very different detector types on a common basis.

The dependence of the analysis on the detector mass is trivial, but important, since it determines the event rates and thus the statistical limitations. The energy thresholds are usually required to lie as low as possible, typically at a few GeV, to cover most of the neutrino beam and to measure the oscillation parameters best. In this paper we approximate that both threshold energy and energy resolution refer to neutrino energies, not muon energies. For the energy resolution we use the conservative model of a constant resolution, where the half width of the smearing function increases linearly with the energy: $`\sigma _E=c\times E`$. We refer to the constant $`c`$ here as energy resolution in percent. The results which are obtained in this way show thus the generic physics potential of a certain beam–detector combination including beam properties, cross sections and essential detector features. We do not include systematic limitations and backgrounds which are different for each setup111Note however that intrinsic backgrounds due to the beam are very similar for all detectors.. The results for the generic physics potential, which will be very impressive, are thus in some cases expected to be reduced in the actual experiment by some systematics or background issue.

We discuss now in more detail the assumptions about beams and detectors of our study and the used parameter values. Some of these parameters have simple scaling laws so that other values can be easily obtained. The dependence on the less trivial parameters (like detector resolution) will be shown in our plots.

The following neutrino beams are considered: Conventional Wide Band Beams are produced by shooting high energy protons with a few hundred GeV onto a massive target . The produced pions and kaons are collected via a magnetic lens system and decay after a few hundred meter. We assume here that these beams can be pointed anywhere on Earth. The resulting beam consists mainly of $`\nu _\mu `$ with admixtures of other flavors at the percent level. Reversing the lens current produces in principle a beam consisting mainly of $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$, however the systematics of the two beams is different. Examples for this type of neutrino beams are the K2K beam, the NUMI beam and the CNGS beam. We use in our calculations as prototype the CNGS spectrum and flux for $`4.510^{19}\text{pot}`$. There exist proposals to upgrade this technique for future long baseline experiments, these improvements can be considered by properly rescaling our results.

Neutrino Factory Beams produced from muon decays in storage rings are highly collimated and very intense.The beam systematics are well understood so that high precision measurements of oscillation parameters and masses, as well as a dedicated test of matter effects, should be possible. We include in this work a Neutrino Factory beam from $`10^{20}`$ useful muon decays at an energy of $`50\mathrm{GeV}`$.

Magnetized iron detectors are widely considered to be the detection system of choice for neutrino factory long baseline oscillation experiments . Very good charge identification capabilities (CID) are required to separate muons from antimuons in order to separate the $`\nu _e\nu _\mu `$ appearance oscillation channel from the $`\nu _\mu \nu _\mu `$ disappearance channel. If sufficient CID can not be achieved222This issue is still open and one can find claims ranging from $`10^6`$ up to $`10^2`$., then appearance channel measurements are spoiled and the analysis of the disappearance channels becomes important . To take this issue into account, we consider here the two extreme cases: Perfect CID and completely missing CID. For this type of detector we use an energy threshold of 4 GeV as proposed also in the neutrino factory design studies. Furthermore we use an energy resolution of $`10\%`$ and a total mass of $`10\mathrm{k}\mathrm{t}`$ .

Large water or ice Cherenkov detectors (known also as “neutrino telescopes”) , which consist of large arrays of photomultipliers (PMTs) placed in antarctic ice or sea water, were until recently not considered for very long baseline neutrino experiments. This is connected to the fact that these detectors are usually thought of as having a rather high energy threshold. This high threshold arises for the reconstruction of cosmic events and is a consequence of the distances in the PMT multiplier arrays and the minimum number of PMT hits for track reconstruction (i.e. the direction of the event). The threshold is also connected to the reduction of the background. It was however recently pointed out, that a neutrino oscillation experiment with high event rate and known source position, can have a much lower threshold . Reconstructing the event direction is in this case in principle not necessary and one can therefore trigger on fewer PMTs leading to a lower threshold for this mode of operation. Using the beam pulse timing information and rough muon direction information it is furthermore possible to reduce the background and hence also the energy threshold significantly. Furthermore we will show in this paper that some measurements are rather insensitive to this threshold. For our study we use as prototype detector IceCube with an effective mass of $`100\mathrm{M}\mathrm{t}`$ and an energy resolution of $`50\%`$. The energy threshold should lie somewhere between an optimistic value of 5 GeV and a conservative value of 30 GeV (which could be easily achieved by the IceCube project) and we use in our study a medium value of 15 GeV .

As a last type of detector we considered a megaton ring imaging Cherenkov detector like in the AQUA-RICH proposal. Due to its dense optical sensor array and imaging technique, such a detector would have an extraordinary small energy threshold. Furthermore with its $`1\mathrm{M}\mathrm{t}`$ detector mass, AQUA-RICH lies between the above presented detectors. We use for such a detector as characterizing parameters an energy threshold of 1 GeV, an energy resolution of $`7\%`$ and an overall mass of $`1\mathrm{M}\mathrm{t}`$ .

The results which we will present below are obtained in a standard three neutrino framework in matter. We use for the atmospheric mass splitting the current best fit, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2=\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2=\mathrm{\Delta }m^2=3.210^3\mathrm{eV}^2`$ and we use maximal atmospheric mixing, $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{23}=1`$ . Details of the underlying formalism can again be found in . We work in the limit where the quadratic solar mass splitting is ignored, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2=0`$. We have thus two leading oscillation parameters ($`\theta _{23}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$) and two sub-leading parameters ($`\theta _{13}`$ and $`\mathrm{sgn}\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$) and no effects from the CP-violating phase $`\delta `$ . This approximation is justified since CP-violating effects disappear quickly for the large distances considered . For the leading oscillation parameters the question is how precise they can be extracted and the goal for the sub-leading parameter $`\theta _{13}`$ is to measure it with some precision or to give at least an improved limit below the present CHOOZ limit of $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}<0.1`$ . $`\theta _{13}`$ also dominantly controls the impact of matter effects in oscillation measurements. Thus the $`\theta _{13}`$ reach is highly correlated with the ability to determine the structure of the mass hierarchy (i.e the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$).

The following plots show the precision in the measurement of these parameters for the three discussed detector types (magnetized iron detector with and without CID, IceCube and AQUA-RICH) in combination with the two beams described. We compare the performance to determine the leading parameters $`\theta _{23}`$ (fig. 1) and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2|`$ (fig. 2). Also shown is the sensitivity for $`\theta _{13}`$ (fig. 3) and the capability to determine the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ (fig. 4). Fig. 4 shows the limit in $`\theta _{13}`$ above which tests of matter effects are possible. A detailed explanation of how these results are obtained can be found in  where the applied statistical method is also presented. The figures show always on the left side the results for a neutrino factory beam, while the right plots show the conventional CNGS–like Wide Band Beam.

The precisions and sensitivities in the figures are presented as functions of the energy threshold ranging from 1 GeV to 30 GeV. The dependence on the energy resolution is in all cases strictly monotonic and nearly linear on logarithmic scales. This dependence is shown in the plots by the bands for a resolution of 5% (lower edge) to 50% (upper edge). The black lines inside the bands denote the characteristic energy resolution given above in table 1 and the dot on these lines marks the corresponding typical energy threshold. The baseline of 6500 km may not be a realistic option for IceCube, but the influence of the baseline for detectors without CID is between 6000 km and 12000 km marginal. The sensitivity reach and the resolution scale in general approximately as $`\sqrt{M\mathrm{\Phi }t}`$, where $`M`$ is the detector mass, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ the neutrino flux and $`t`$ the running time of the experiment.

Figs. 1 and 2 show the precision which could in principle be obtained in the determination of $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{23}`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2|`$ at a baseline of 11200 km. There is no difference in the performance of an iron detector with and without charge identification so that there appears only one band for this type of experiment in the figure. This is not unexpected, since the information on these two parameters is contained in the disappearance rates. All experimental setups show not much influence of the energy threshold on the precision of the leading parameters. The accuracy is mainly governed by statistics which is given essentially by the mass of the detector. Thus IceCube, the largest detector in our study, has for both beams the best potential.

Fig. 3 shows the mean sensitivity to $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$. The magnetized iron detector benefits here significantly from charge identification (CID), i.e. the capability to measure the appearance channel. For the neutrino factory beam pointing to detectors without CID there is a strong threshold effect at about 15 GeV, which is roughly the MSW–resonance energy in the Earth mantle. This threshold effect is less pronounced for the Wide Band Beam since its flux is much lower in the MSW–resonance energy regime. Fig. 3 demonstrates nicely the importance of the energy threshold for experiments which are based on conventional beams pointing to large Cherenkov detectors like IceCube or ANTARES. Note that neutrino factory beams pointing to large water or ice Cherenkov detectors have in principle the highest potential if the involved technological issues can be solved. A discussion of the questions involved can be found in . The strongest influence of the threshold is found for the determination of the the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ in fig. 4. For the setups with a neutrino factory beam there is again a clear effect at about 15 GeV, for the same reasons as mentioned above.

In summary, we have compared in this study the generic physics potential for neutrino oscillation studies. We considered neutrino factory beams and conventional Wide Band Beams pointing to three different types of detectors: magnetized iron calorimeters, large water or ice Cherenkov detector and megaton ring imaging Cherenkov detectors. The quantities studied are the precision for the leading oscillation parameters $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{23}`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2|`$ as well as the sensitivity to the sub-leading MSW–enhanced oscillation parameters $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ and the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$. For the precision measurement of $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{23}`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2|`$ the single most important parameter which characterizes the performance of a detector is its mass. Neither typical energy thresholds for muon detection nor the energy resolution have a big influence on the precision as long as the threshold does not exceed $`30\mathrm{GeV}`$. Thus large km3 Cherenkov detectors like IceCube in conjunction with a neutrino factory beam perform in principle best, with a relative error down to about $`410^4`$. A conventional beam pointed to an IceCube-like detector performs in principle about half an order of magnitude better than the usually considered combination of neutrino factory and magnetized iron calorimeter, which has an error of about $`10^2`$. Note however that we discuss here the generic physics potential which can be achieved in principle and further systematic and background effects may (and probably will) affect our conclusions.

For the determination of the sub-leading parameters $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ and the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ we find a different situation in our results. The possibility to measure appearance rates (requiring sufficient muon charge identification) is here extremely helpful. Especially for detectors without charge identification we observe an intricate interplay of event rates, threshold and energy resolution. To obtain useful results with a conventional beam one needs then very large detector masses of at least $`1\text{Mt}`$. The threshold dependence of the limits is also rather strong and the energy resolution is also important. Huge IceCube-like detectors and the megaton ring imaging detector (AQUA-RICH) have however in principle a comparable performance down to $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}(28)10^3`$. The wrong sign muon signal in a magnetized iron calorimeter gives for a neutrino factory beam the best sensitivity of about $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}10^4`$. The performance of IceCube is however in principle rather similar and reaches also down to $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}410^4`$. Note however again that we study here the generic physics potential and the measurement of $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ and the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ will be limited essentially in all cases by further systematic and background issues.

Our results show in a larger context that detectors with imperfect or even missing muon charge identification (which are therefore insensitive to the appearance oscillation channel) are useful for precision measurements of oscillation parameters . Especially in high rate neutrino experiments, where statistical errors are small, the information which is inherent to the disappearance rates is very useful.

The generic physics potential studied here is expected to be at least in some cases limited by further technological limitations, systematic and background effects. For magnetized iron detectors excellent charge separation is for example a crucial issue. Neutrino telescopes are in principle very interesting due to their huge mass. For the high event rates obtained directional information becomes less important and it is possible to lower the threshold and to use them for oscillation physics. How well this works has to be further studied. For Wide Band Beams the limiting factors could e.g. lie in the flux monitoring with a near detector. On the other side Wide Band Beam technology will improve even further.

Altogether Wide Band Beams have in principle a very good physics potential to improve our knowledge of $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{23}`$, $`|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2|`$, $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ and the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ until a neutrino factory is built. It is thus conceivable that $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ and even the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{31}^2`$ could be measured (or limited) with conventional beams even down to $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}10^3`$. A neutrino factory would enable measurements (or limits) of these parameters down to $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}10^4`$ and in addition it would so far be the only realistic way to measure leptonic CP–violation .


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# Validation of Up-the-Ramp Sampling with Cosmic Ray Rejection on IR Detectors

## 1 Introduction

The effects of radiation and cosmic rays can be a formidable source of data loss for a space-based observatory. The authors have been studying the question of cosmic ray identification and mitigation in the context of processing data for the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). The deep space, high-radiation environment proposed for the NGST (Stockman, 1997) and the long observing times needed to complete some of the NGST Design Reference Mission programs suggest that careful planning for cosmic ray mitigation is needed (Stockman et al., 1998). Although this study was motivated by the NGST requirements, the methods and results presented here are not specific to the NGST and may be applied to many instruments and observatories.

When a cosmic ray111We use the term “cosmic ray” to refer to a charged particle which injects spurious signal on the photo-conducting layer of the detector. impacts a detector, an undetermined amount of charge is deposited in the photo-conducting layer. When that happens, any unrecorded information stored in the detector at that location is lost and cannot be recovered. In a high-radiation environment (such as deep space), the data loss due to cosmic ray events in the detector may impose limits on observation parameters, such as maximum integration time, which in turn will limit—or prevent—some science programs.

Several solutions to the problem of identifying and removing cosmic rays exist. The most straightforward approach is to integrate multiple times, filter the outliers (pixels in an array with signal different from an expectation value generated from the full image set), and co-add the resulting images. We have additional options if the detector can be sampled non-destructively (i.e. the detector can be read without being reset), a feature that is available on some current and future detectors (e.g. Fowler & Gatley, 1990; Garnett & Forrest, 1993; Fanson, et al., 1998), including those being studied here.

We evaluate and validate Up-the-Ramp sampling with on-the-fly cosmic ray identification and mitigation, which is described in detail by Fixsen, et al. (2000). In this method, the detector is sampled non-destructively at uniform intervals, resulting in a set of reads following the accumulating charge in the detector over time. The signal is measured as the slope of the accumulating charge “ramp,” and cosmic rays and similar glitches can be identified and discarded from the signal measurement. Several concerns about this method exist, namely that the method is too compute-intensive, that it requires detailed calibration with the detector and the approach is too simplistic for the complicated processes involved. Computation requirements are discussed by Fixsen, et al. This paper will validate the Up-the-Ramp method without detailed calibration or complicated models.

The most commonly-discussed alternative to Up-the-Ramp sampling is Fowler sampling (Fowler & Gatley, 1990), in which multiple samples are taken at the start and at the end of an observation to effectively measure the difference $`N`$ times, where $`N`$ is the number of sample-pairs. Fowler sampling, however, does not provide an opportunity to identify and remove cosmic rays from an observation. In addition, in the read-noise limit, Up-the-Ramp sampling provides modestly ($`6\%`$) higher signal-to-noise than Fowler sampling (Garnett & Forrest, 1993). For a detailed comparison of signal-to-noise for Fowler and Up-the-Ramp sampling, see Appendix A.

We utilize data sets from radiation tests which were performed during the design and construction of the SIRTF space-based observatory. The data sets are from InSb and Si:As infrared detectors; we discuss each set individually. We apply the Up-the-Ramp sampling algorithm presented by Fixsen, et al. and examine the results. We validate the Up-the-Ramp approach as a low-cost solution to mitigating cosmic rays and demonstrate the quality of the resulting data.

Section 2 is a summary description of the Up-the-Ramp processing algorithm. Section 3 provides a description of the interactions between charged particles and detectors, with particular emphasis on the effects of cross-talk in the detectors. Section 4 describes the InSb data set; Section 5 describes the Si:As data set. We discuss the results of the algorithm as applied to the InSb data set in Section 6. Section 7 discusses the results from the Si:As data. The main text concludes in Section 8. A detailed discourse on signal-to-noise when considering cosmic rays is in the Appendix.

## 2 Up-the-Ramp Processing Algorithm

The details of the Up-the-Ramp algorithm can be found in Fixsen, et al. (2000). A shorter version is presented in Offenberg, et al. (1999), although the algorithm has been revised since that writing. We provide a summary description of the method here.

The Up-the-Ramp algorithm assumes a non-destructive set of $`N`$ samples for an integration. The general approach does not require the samples be spaced uniformly in time, but it will be most efficient if they are and the implementation used in this study does assume uniform sampling. When processing these data, we process each pixel individually; although there are indications that a radiation event on the detector will affect neighboring pixels via electronic cross-talk (see Section 3), there is no attempt made to “impugn neighbors” of pixels suspected of being impacted by a cosmic ray.

We first identify and remove saturated pixels. To estimate the signal per unit time, we need to discard the samples when the charge-well is full and no data can be collected; in practice there is a region of non-linear response before the detector charge-well is full which should also be discarded. We identify saturated pixels by defining a cut-off value for the upper limit of the linear region of the detector’s response curve. The samples in an observation sequence are compared to this cut-off from the last observation to the first, stopping when a non-saturated sample is found. The saturated samples are discarded from further computation.

Next, we search for cosmic rays and other glitches. We start with a signal estimate; a simple estimate is the mean signal accumulated during one sample time, $`s=(D_ND_0)/N`$. We first seek the worst point, which is measured as the sample $`i`$ with the maximum value $`X_i=|D_iD_{i1}s|`$. We then examine the series by comparing the maximum value of $`X_{max}`$ found to $`\sigma `$, which is the expected noise based on the known read-noise and the photon shot-noise determined by the signal estimate $`s`$. If $`X_{max}>a\sigma `$, (where $`a`$ is a tunable cosmic-ray threshold), $`D_i`$ represents a glitch. $`D_i`$ is then discarded from the data set, $`s`$ is updated, and the search for cosmic rays is repeated. We stop when the worst outlier is within the bounds of acceptable variation.

There are several points that need to be made about the algorithm described in the previous paragraph. We seek cosmic ray glitches in both the positive and negative sense for several reasons. Although cosmic rays will normally inject (not subtract) charge to the detector, negative-sense glitches can occur as the result of impacts on the electronics. Also, the statistical test used to identify cosmic rays will be subject to false-positive identificiations—to avoid biasing the data, we must discard such outliers in both directions. We reject only one outlier on each pass as we have found that procedure to be the most robust in the case of multiple cosmic rays.

We then fit the remaining data to a line using a weighted least-squares fit—the figure of interest is the signal per unit time, which is the slope of this line. The weights are determined by the signal-to-noise estimate, based on the signal estimate $`s`$ computed earlier and the read noise of the detector; in low signal-to-noise cases, the data points are weighted evenly for the fit. In high signal-to-noise cases, the end-points are weighted more heavily than the middle-points. To speed up the algorithm, we precompute the coefficients to produce this weighted fit for a set of signal-to-noise values, and select the fit corresponding to the highest signal-to-noise which is less than the measured value. This approximation is less than optimal, but is very close to optimal with as few as 8 S/N values and does not bias the results. Underestimating the noise in the data is a much worse case than overestimating the noise, so we consistently choose the weighting to overestimate the noise, corresponding to lower signal-to-noise ratio (Fixsen, et al., 2000).

In the case where a sequence is broken up by one or more cosmic rays, the slope is computed for each segment uninterrupted by a cosmic ray, saturated or other glitch sample. The slopes are then combined using a weighted average, where each slope is optimally weighted.

We set the noise and detector saturation levels to appropriate values for the data sets being processed, but did not otherwise alter the algorithm or tune the cosmic ray detection algorithm parameters. In particular, the threshold for identifying a cosmic ray in the tests described here was $`4.5\sigma `$, the optimum threshold found by Fixsen, et al. for their test case.

## 3 Cosmic Ray/Detector Interaction

When an energetic cosmic ray interacts with an IR detector, its main effect is to excite charge in the photo-conducting layer of the detector, contributing signal to the detector in the region impacted. The precise amount of charge injected is effectively random with some probability distribution, as it depends on several factors (e.g. the energy of an individual cosmic ray) which are either random or which can not be recovered a posteriori. In short, an energetic cosmic ray injects an unknowable amount of energy into the detector—this, in effect, destroys the information recorded in the impacted pixel(s) since the last measurement.

A cosmic ray interacting with the detector can have effects which persist for a significant time after the initial impact. For example, if a cosmic ray liberates a very large amount of charge from the detector’s photo-conducting layer in a short time, it may take a measurable time while electrons repopulate the detector material, during which time the gain in that pixel might be flat, or varying over time. Note that this and similar effects might persist for seconds or minutes—given sufficient recovery time, the detector will function as before the cosmic ray hit in most cases.222Over time, repeated particle impacts and radiation exposure will permanently damage the detector, but the long-term degradation from a single particle impact should not be measurable. The net effect of these persistent effects is that data collected at a detector pixel element might be invalid for a time after a cosmic ray hit. This can be accommodated by modifying the data–fitting algorithm to ignore a set number of samples after a cosmic ray detection. For this study, we assume that persistent effects in the InSb and the Si:As arrays are small and can be ignored.

A particle event can induce cross-talk between neighboring pixels. This effect increases the number of pixels affected by a particle impact beyond those directly hit—a potentially significant source of data loss. In a detector array, such as those being described here, cross-talk can occur either in the multiplexer or in the array itself. In the InSb arrays studied here, pixels are read out every 4 columns—so multiplexer-based cross-talk (“MUX bleed”) will result in spurious signal 4 columns away from a pixel impacted by a cosmic ray. If, for example, one has just read out the pixel at coordinate $`x`$=144, $`y`$=152, the next pixel to be read (in time) will be $`x`$=148, $`y`$=152. Figure 1 clearly shows this effect. The most important source of cross-talk in the detector array (as opposed to the multiplexer) is charge diffusion. Once charges are created in the photo-conductive layer, their motion is governed by charge diffusion and the potential established by pixel electrodes. Holloway (1986) has numerically solved the charge-diffusion equation for a 2-dimensional detector array. He found that cross-talk diminished approximately exponentially with radius. Moreover, the amount of cross-talk depends on how far from the electrodes charge is created. For light, long wavelengths tend to be absorbed deep in the photo-conductive layer, near the depletion region, and have less cross talk than shorter wavelengths which would be absorbed at shallower depths. Because particle events liberate charge all along their path, we expect the amount of cross-talk would be intermediate between that generated by short and long wavelength light.333Based on Holloway’s (1986) analysis, manufacturers can alter an array’s cross-talk by varying three parameters. These are: (1) the thickness of the photo-conductive layer, (2) the pixel spacing, and (3) the diffusion length in the photo-conductor. However, altering any of these parameters may alter other array properties in undesirable ways. To cite two examples, an extremely thin detector would have very little cross-talk at the expense of poor red sensitivity. Alternatively, one might strive to reduce cross-talk by making big pixels. However, this would increase pixel capacitance, $`C`$, and because the voltage change produced by one charge, d$`V`$, scales as $`\mathrm{d}V=\mathrm{d}Q/C`$, the resulting array would have reduced output gain and consequently higher readout noise.

The cross-talk effect was studied and quantified in the InSb data set for a different study (Rauscher et al., 2000). To measure this effect, Rauscher et al. stacked a large number, $``$100, of proton hits and the pixels surrounding them. We define the term “edge-neighbors of a pixel” to refer to the four pixels which share an edge with the pixel in question; the “corner-neighbors of a pixel” are those which have a common corner but no common edge with the pixel in question. In the InSb data set, the edge-neighbors of a pixel impacted by a particle hit exhibited a cross-talk-induced signal of about 1.7% of the signal in the central, impacted pixel. The corner-neighbors also showed a cross-talk-induced signal, about an order of magnitude less than the edge-neighbors. Figure 1 shows that multiplexer-induced cross-talk is present in this data set as well, at about the same magnitude as the corner-neighbors. The corner-neighbors and the multiplexer-induced cross-talk are faint with respect to the read noise, typically at or below $`3\sigma _r`$, and thus will be indistinguishable from random noise. This approach was duplicated for the Si:As data set with a set of $``$36 proton hits. In the Si:As data set, Figure 2, the magnitude of the cross-talk in the edge-neighbors was about 3.0% of the signal in the impacted pixel, while the corner-neighbors were impacted by about an order of magnitude less than the edge-neighbors. There are also signs of multiplexer-induced cross-talk, also on par with the corner-neighbors. Again, both the corner-neighbor and multiplexer-induced cross-talk are below $`3\sigma _r`$ and should be indistinguishable from random noise.

The net effect of this cross-talk is that most particle events will affect a clump of pixels in a cross or an extended cross in the case of a particle which passes through multiple pixels. In the case of “glancing” cosmic rays, which inject relatively small signals, the signal induced by cross-talk in some or all of the edge-neighbors could fade into the noise, in which case a smaller clump or only one pixel might be affected measurably. One way to increase the ability of the cosmic ray detection algorithm is to add an “impugn neighbors” step, by which we mean either lowering the threshold for finding glitches, or rejecting outright, pixels which neighbor a glitch when one is found. Such a step will add very little to the running time, as the Up-the-Ramp software is already dominated by input (Fixsen et al., 2000). However, we are concerned that adding such a step might cause the cosmic ray identification algorithm to discard excessive amounts of valid data, to the detriment of the overall data quality. Rather than modify the Fixsen et al. algorithm, we apply the algorithm as originally presented to determine the level of its success without adding an “impugn neighbors” step.

The result of a cosmic ray event is the loss of one interval during the Up-the-Ramp observation (potentially plus a few extra intervals if the detector shows persistent effects) for a group of pixels clumped in a (sometimes incomplete) cross-shaped pattern. This loss degrades the quality of the data-fitting routine; on average, the signal-to-noise ratio for a cosmic-ray pixel is reduced by 1/$`\sqrt{2}`$ for low-signal cases, up to $`\sqrt{(N1)/N}`$ for high-signal cases with $`N`$ samples. Of course, this reduction in signal-to-noise will often be preferable to the alternative, which is total loss. Furthermore, as Fixsen, et al. point out, on-the-fly cosmic ray rejection enables longer integration times, which provides a straightforward way to increase the signal-to-noise to compensate for such loss.

## 4 InSb Data Set

The InSb data are from a $`256\times 256`$-pixel InSb (Indium Antimonide) detector array which researchers at the University of Rochester subjected to proton flux at the Harvard Cyclotron.

Each 172-millisecond integration was recorded as one Fowler pair (Fowler & Gatley, 1990), followed by a reset of the detector. As a result, each raw sample of the detector represents an independent 172 ms integration. We use a set of 99 such images. So we can apply the Up-the-Ramp algorithm to this data set, we co-add the independent samples to create an Up-the-Ramp sequence (i.e. The Up-the-Ramp samples are generated from the Raw samples via $`U_0=R_0`$, $`U_i=U_{i1}+R_i`$). The set $`\{U_{0\mathrm{}98}\}`$ approximates a uniformly-sampled data set; for example, the covariance of the samples does not match the form of the covariance assumed in the data processing algorithm (Fixsen, et al., 2000). Since this is an approximation to a Up-the-Ramp sequence, we are making use of less-than-ideal data to conduct this test. However, the differences should be slight and should not affect the overall validity of the results of this test.

The array was irradiated using a 70 MeV beam; the dewar walls attenuated the energy to 20 MeV. The Rochester team conducted these tests with the proton beam emitting $`6.5\times 10^4`$ protons cm-2 s-1. From the array pixel size of $`30\mu \mathrm{m}\times 30\mu \mathrm{m}`$ pixels and the fact that there are $`256\times 256`$ pixels in the detector, we find that the array is impacted by approximately $`3.8\times 10^4`$ protons sec-1. This is approximately equal to the ion flux which would be expected in deep space at the height of a major solar event, between 3 and 4 orders of magnitude greater than the “typical” cosmic ray flux in deep space, and so represents a severe test of the cosmic ray detection algorithm. (Barth & Isaacs, 1999; Tribble 1995).

The path through the detector array of a cosmic ray from an isotropic distribution is effectively random. However, for the InSb radiation test, the proton beam had a predetermined angle of incidence, 23 degrees from the plane of the detector. Coupled with the InSb pixel dimensions of $`30\mu \mathrm{m}\times 30\mu \mathrm{m}\times 8\mu \mathrm{m}`$, we calculate that the projection of the typical proton’s path onto the plane of the detector array is about 19$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ long. If we project this path length onto random locations on the plane of the detector, we find that about half of the protons will pass through 1 pixel and about half will pass through 2 pixels. For this computation, we ignore the effects of scattering and secondary particles.

When a proton physically passes through 1 pixel, cross-talk effects will cause a total of 5 pixels to be affected at the $`3\sigma `$ level or higher. When a proton passes through 2 pixels, 8 total pixels are affected at $`3\sigma `$ or higher. If we assume a 50-50 split between these two cases for the InSb data set, an average of 6.5 pixels are affected per proton. Since we expect the InSb detector array will encounter $`3.8\times 10^4`$ protons sec-1, we find that about 13.8% of the detector array is affected by radiation for each 172 ms second sample. This type of analysis presents difficulties in performing formal uncertainty analysis, but we estimate that these numbers are good to $`\pm 25`$%.

A sample image from the raw InSb data set appears in Figure 3. This is a raw image, randomly chosen from the original sequence ($`R_{74}`$ in the notation used earlier), and the number of cosmic rays on this image is that of a single 172 millisecond interval. The images are mostly dark frames. To create a “pseudo-real sky” image for comparison purposes, we create a median image, Figure 4, in which each pixel is the median value of the raw samples for that pixel. We then scale to the full integration time by multiplying the median values by 99, the number of samples in the observation sequence. The result compares favorably with an illuminated flat field frame. The observed “tree ring” structure, representing doping density variations in the InSb, appears in illuminated frames but not in dark current frames. Thus, either there is a small light leak, or the filter wheel has been warmed by proton irradiation, illuminating the array, albeit to a very low level. Similarly, there is a readout “glow”; this effect is present over the entire image but is most pronounced in the first few rows sampled (corresponding to the bottom of the frame).

## 5 Si:As Data Set

The Si:As data are from a $`40\times 40`$-pixel region of a $`256\times 256`$-pixel Si:As (Silicon doped with Arsenic) IBC detector which was subjected to proton flux at the University of California–Davis cyclotron.

The Si:As data set is a series of 52-millisecond integrations, each recorded as a 1 Fowler-pair observation (Fowler & Gatley, 1990), followed by a reset of the detector. A $`40\times 40`$-pixel subregion of the detector was used; the photo-conducting region of each pixel was approximately $`30\mu \mathrm{m}\times 30\mu \mathrm{m}\times 30\mu \mathrm{m}`$. As in the InSb case, the data are dark frames.

We generate an approximate Up-the-Ramp sequence by co-adding 36 independent samples using the same procedure described in Section 4. The caveats regarding the use of this approximation which were discussed in Section 4 apply to the Si:As data as well. These differences still should not affect the overall validity of the results of this test.

The array was irradiated with a 67 MeV proton beam operating in an uncalibrated mode (i.e. the proton flux is not independently known). The proton beam passed through only a thin plastic window on its way to the detector—there was no dewar wall in the proton beam path, as there was in the InSb data set. As a result, the protons should not be scattered or attenuated appreciably.

As the proton flux was not directly measured, the only source of information with regard to the number of events expected on the detector is the data set itself. We estimate the number of events by examining a sequence of 36 raw (difference) samples and counting the number of outliers from the background dark value as a function of the outlier threshold; we expect the read noise to be a Gaussian distribution and thus the number of outliers due to read noise should fall off in a Gaussian pattern as we increase the threshold. Outliers caused by protons, which should be large with respect to the dark value, will not fall off at low multiples of $`\sigma `$. In the sample we tested, the number of outliers flattened out in the interval 4$`\sigma `$-to-5$`\sigma `$. If we use these values as the lower and upper limits for the threshold, we find that between 3.0% ($`4\sigma `$) and 2.4% ($`5\sigma `$) of the pixels should be identified as particle hits or neighbors impacted by cross-talk for each interval. For a 36-frame sequence of $`40\times 40`$-pixel images, we expect to find around $`1500\pm 200`$ pixels impacted by cosmic rays during the observation. This figure includes pixels impacted both by cosmic rays and by cross-talk (see Section 3). Since the proton beam was oriented normal to the plane of the detector, most of the protons would physically pass through one pixel; based on the cross-talk model, we expect that $``$20% of the glitches are cosmic-ray hits, the rest being caused by cross-talk. We find that the cosmic ray flux is approximately $`1.1\times 10^4`$ protons s-1 cm-2. This flux is about a factor of 6 lower than that used in the InSb test.

The signal in the Si:As images is heavily quantized (i.e. the histogram of the data values is fairly sparse). The statistical tests used to identify the cosmic ray glitches and the line-fitting algorithm from Fixsen, et al. will perform best when the data are continuous or the level of quantization is small relative to the size of the data. Although we do not expect this to be a major problem, the uncertainty in the results from the line-fitting routine may be larger than it would otherwise be.

A sample image from the raw Si:As data set appears in Figure 5. This is a raw image, randomly chosen from the original sequence ($`R_{27}`$ in the notation used in Section 4), and the number of cosmic rays on this image is that of a single interval, 52 milliseconds. To create a “pseudo-real sky” image for comparison purposes, we create a median image, Figure 6, in which each pixel is the median value of the raw samples for that pixel. We then scale to the full integration time by multiplying the median values by 36, the number of samples in the observation.

## 6 InSb Results & Discussion

The output data image from the processing the 99 InSb samples appears in Figure 7. A difference image between this image and the median image appears in Figure 8. Figure 9 shows the pattern of cosmic rays identified in a randomly-chosen sample (the same sample that is shown in Figure 3).

We perform one simple tuning operation with this data set to verify that the cosmic ray threshhold of $`4.5\sigma `$ used by Fixsen, et al. was appropriate for this data set. We divide the 99-image sequence of InSb samples into two 49-image sequences (discarding one), and generate two Up-the-Ramp sequences. The two sequences are then processed using a series of cosmic ray rejection threshholds, generating one pair of output images for each threshhold value. We measure the uncertainty of the threshhold value as the RMS difference between the two images of each pair for that value. We examine the threshholds to be in the range of $`17\sigma `$ equally spaced at intervals of $`0.5`$ (i.e. $`[1,1.5,2,2.5,\mathrm{},7]\sigma `$). The initial pass shows a minimum between $`4\sigma `$ and $`5\sigma `$, so we repeat the test between these two values at intervals of $`0.1`$. The results are shown in Figure 10; the minimum appears at $`4.5\sigma `$. Because there are insufficient samples to repeat this test reliably with the Si:As data set, we adopt $`4.5\sigma `$ as the threshhold value for that data set as well. We also find median image for the two subimage sequences, and compute the RMS difference for the two median images. The RMS difference at $`4.5\sigma `$ is 3.24, compared with the value of 2.33 for the median case; however, if we discard the pixels for which contain a surviving cosmic ray in either image of each set (27 pixels in the Up-the-Ramp case, 49 pixels in the median case), the Up-the-Ramp RMS difference drops to 1.34, whereas the RMS for the median images is 1.37.

As discussed in Section 4, we find that 13.8% of the detector should be affected by a proton or by cross-talk for each sample; the total number of pixels affected by protons plus those affected by cross-talk comes to 895,000 for the entire sequence ($`\pm 224,000`$, using our ballpark estimate of 25% for the uncertainty in this number). The cosmic ray rejection algorithm, with the minimal tuning, identifies and rejects 1,063,000 bad samples from this observation sequence. This number lies within the uncertainty range for the number of expected bad samples. We must be cautious against reading too much into this result, but it is safe to say that the number of cosmic rays identified is in the right ballpark444Those who dislike sports analogies can substitute “…is enough egg for an omlette.”. The overall performance can be improved by tuning the parameters of the algorithm, which will require repeated and detailed radiation tests with the detector.

An examination of Figure 9 shows that most of the cosmic ray detections are clumped in cross-hatch patterns, matching the current-leak pattern described in Section 3. Thus, the cosmic-ray identification algorithm catches many of the neighboring pixels affected by cross-talk without having to add an “impugn neighbors” step, as described in Section 3. When the full energy spectrum of cosmic rays in deep space is considered, the amount of charge injected, and the resulting signal, will often be smaller than that induced by a cyclotron proton. The fact that the cosmic ray identification algorithm catches the neighbor-leak events shows that it is capable of identifying the full spectrum (i.e. bright, faint and in-between) of cosmic rays that we expect to encounter in a deep space environment (contrasted with the limited particle energy spectrum generated by the cyclotron). As this is a dark frame, faint bad pixels stand out from their neighbors; the current cosmic ray identification software might not work as well in brighter regions of the image, where increased Poisson noise will affect the statistical test used to identify cosmic rays. Brighter images and fainter cosmic rays will combine to mask the “neighbor-leak” events—tuning the algorithm to the specific detector would minimize the impact of these effects, but a step to “impugn neighbors” might still be required during astronomical observations.

The frames in this study are dark frames. As was discussed in Section 4, there appears to be a small light leak or thermal glow which is faintly illuminating the array as a whole. There is also an apparent “glow” effect, which is most prominent in the first few rows sampled (the bottom of the image in the orientation shown in Figure 4 and Figure 7). The only other non-random contributions to the flux should be the dark current, “hot” pixels and other detector artifacts. By taking the image generated from performing the median operation on the raw data set, Figure 4, and scaling up from 1 sample to 99 by multiplication, the dark value is computed to be $`4880\pm 41`$ data units (1.8 electrons per data unit). The dark value on the processed image is computed to be $`4881\pm 40`$ data units—the median and processed median dark values agree very strongly, well within the margin for error. In addition, note that the readout “glow” at the bottom of the image as well as the faint “tree ring” structure over much of the detector, both of which appear in Figure 4, are preserved in Figure 7 (both of those effects can be mistaken for errors in printing or reproduction, but they are genuine).

Overall, the processed image and the median image agree very well at most individual pixels to within the uncertainty of the dark level established in the previous paragraph. 99.5% of all pixels agree within this tolerance; most of the remainder are surviving cosmic rays. This result, combined with the estimated number of cosmic ray events derived earlier, suggests that the cosmic ray algorithm successfully identified and removed over 99.96% of the proton events on the detector.

We examine in detail the pixels in which the processed image and the median/comparison image disagree by at least $`3\sigma `$. A total of 88 pixels fit into this category; 44 of them occur in places where both of the images are high-signal (detector hotspots), and thus where we expect that higher Poisson noise, non-linear response and other effects increase the normally-expected noise. Of the remaining 44 instances, 35 are cases where the processed image is brighter than the median image; these are cosmic rays which were missed by the cosmic ray detection algorithm. The remaining 9 instances, where the processed image is darker, are all cases where more than half of the samples were affected by cosmic rays, so the median of the sample is a cosmic ray sample—these 9 pixels contain cosmic rays which were caught by the algorithm in Fixsen, et al., but which the median operation missed.

## 7 Si:As Results & Discussion

The output data image from the processing the 36 Si:As samples appears in Figure 11. A difference image between this image and the median image appears in Figure 12. Figure 13 shows the pattern of cosmic rays identified in a randomly-chosen sample (the same sample that is shown in Figure 5).

As discussed in Section 5, we expect to find $`1500\pm 200`$ pixels affected by a proton or cross-talk during the full 36-sample observation. The cosmic ray rejection algorithm, with only the minimal tuning described in Section 1, identifies and rejects 1230 bad samples during the observation sequence. This number lies outside of the uncertainty range for the number of expected bad samples, but by a small margin. Again, the result is promising.

An examination of Figure 13 shows that most of the cosmic ray detections are clumped in cross-hatch patterns, again matching the current-leak pattern described in Section 3. As was the case with the InSb case, this shows that the cosmic-ray identification algorithm catches the neighbors affected by cross-talk without requiring any extra steps.

The Si:As images are dark frames; the only non-random signals are from dark current and detector artifacts. By taking the median image (Figure 6) and scaling from 1 sample to 36 by multiplication, the dark value is found to be $`375\pm 9`$ data units, compared to the processed image’s dark value of $`348\pm 6`$ data units—the dark values for these images agree to within 3$`\sigma `$. If we compare Figure 6 and Figure 11, we see that the signal along the bottom and right-hand side of the detector are preserved in the output image, although heavy quantization limits the amount of observable structure in the median image.

Overall, the processed and median images disagree by more than 3 times the uncertainty of the processed image at 5 pixels. In all 5 cases, the processed image has a lower signal than the median image by just over $`3\sigma `$ (3.01–3.12$`\sigma `$). These deviations appear to be caused by error in the data fitting routine due to the heavy quantization of the input data. As the proton hits will bias the median image towards higher signals, we recomputed the median image, discarding reads which differ from the mean by more than $`3\sigma `$. Removal of this bias reduces the number of different pixels to 3. As the large quantization adds noise to the median which will be less pronounced in the processed data, the median may be a less accurate measure of the “real sky” than the output image. There do not appear to be any missed cosmic rays in the output image.

## 8 Conclusion

The Up-the-Ramp sampling and on-the-fly cosmic ray rejection algorithm performs excellently on the radiation test data from the InSb and Si:As detectors, particularly when we consider that the data were not originally Up-the-Ramp samples (but co-added intervals), the algorithm parameters were only minimally tuned to the detector, the data were not linearized before processing and we ignored any possibility of persistent radiation effects, which is particularly important since the particle rates were extremely high. Detailed tuning of the algorithm with the experiment detector will improve these results. The cosmic ray algorithm did not introduce any 2-D structure into the image, and preserved the structure which was there. Finally, the small number of pixels for which the median and processed images which differed significantly shows that the Up-the-Ramp sampling can and does preserve the photometric quality of the data.

We have attempted to answer some common concerns about the use of Up-the-Ramp sampling strategies. We have shown that the algorithm performs well without precise tuning to the detector characteristics, as we have obtained good performance without such tuning. Another concern is that the cosmic-ray/detector interaction model assumed in the design of the algorithm is too simplistic; however, the results here show good performance without requiring additional complicating features. In short, we haven’t found any “show-stoppers” that would lead to the conclusion that the algorithm requires excessive computing or human interaction to provide useful scientific data.

These results are limited to the detector technologies being studied here. A key future direction for this study is to apply the techniques discussed here to additional detector technologies (such as HgCdTe technology, used in the NICMOS instrument on HST). This is particularly true in the context of detector characterization studies for observatories and instruments being designed currently or in the near future, which is how this study started. However, the fact that we obtain very similar results with the two technologies suggests that the cosmic ray mitigation approach studied here could be applied to many instruments and detectors.

These studies are supported by the NASA Remote Exploration and Experimentation Project (REE), which is administered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory under Dr. Robert Ferraro, Project Manager. We acknowledge our colleague Craig McCreight at NASA’s Ames Research Center for his contributions in bringing all of the authors together. We thank the reviewer of this paper for their useful suggestions during the referee process.

## Appendix A Signal-to-Noise

We selected Up-the-Ramp sampling for study because it provides better signal-to-noise in what is probably the most difficult-to-measure regime, the read-noise limit. In the absence of cosmic rays, Up-the-Ramp sampling provides modestly ($`6\%`$) higher signal-to-noise than does Fowler Sampling (Garnett & Forrest, 1993). The fact that an Up-the-Ramp sequence can be screened for cosmic rays and other glitches improves this result. Furthermore, on-the-fly cosmic ray rejection allows longer integration times which also improves the signal-to-noise in the faint limit.

Fowler sampling reduces the effect of read noise555We treat read noise as random “white noise”. to $`\sigma _r^{}=\sigma _r\sqrt{\frac{4}{N}}`$ (for an observation sequence consisting of $`N`$ samples, $`N/2`$ Fowler-pairs). However, when a pixel is impacted by a cosmic ray during an observation, the cosmic ray essentially injects infinite variance and reduces the signal to noise to zero at that location. If we start with the Fowler sampling signal-to-noise function in the read-noise limit, from Garnett & Forrest (1993, Eqn. 6),

$$SN_F=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{2}\sigma _r}\sqrt{\frac{\eta T}{2\delta t}}\left(1\frac{\eta }{2}\right)=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{V_0}}$$
(A1)
where $`F`$ is the flux of the target, $`T`$ is the observation time, $`\sigma _r`$ is the read noise, $`\eta `$ is the Fowler duty cycle and $`\delta t`$ is the time between sample intervals (determined by engineering or scientific constraints on the system). We note this formula breaks down for relatively small numbers of samples (i.e. $`\delta t`$ large with respect to $`T`$). $`FT`$ is the signal, so the remaining terms are the noise, which is the square-root of the variance, $`V_0`$. If we consider two cases, “no-cosmic-ray” and “hit-by-cosmic-ray” and combine the variances according to

$$V_{comb}=\frac{V_0P_0W_0^2+V_1P_1W_1^2}{(W_0P_0+W_1P_1)^2}$$
(A2)
we can rewrite Equation A1 as

$$SN_{FC}=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{V_{comb}}}=\frac{FT(W_0P_0+W_1P_1)}{\sqrt{V_0P_0W_0^2+V_1P_1W_1^2}}$$
(A3)
As the weight is the inverse of the variance ($`W_i=1/V_i`$), Equation A3 can be rewritten as

$$SN_{FC}=\frac{FT(\frac{P_0}{V_0}+\frac{P_1}{V_1})}{\sqrt{P_0/V_0+P_1/V_1}}=FT\sqrt{\frac{P_0}{V_0}+\frac{P_1}{V_1}}$$
(A4)
$`V_0`$ is the variance in the no-cosmic-ray case, taken from Equation A1 and $`P_0`$ is the probability of a pixel surviving without a cosmic ray hit. For simplicity, we define $`1P`$ to be the probability of a pixel being hit by a cosmic ray per time unit $`\delta t`$, so $`P`$ is the probability of “survival” and $`P_0=P^{T/\delta t}`$. As a cosmic ray hits injects infinite uncertainty, the variance in the cosmic ray case $`V_1=\mathrm{}`$. Plugging in to Equation A4, we get the signal-to-noise for Fowler sampling in the read-noise limited with cosmic rays, Equation A5:

$$SN_{FC}=FT\sqrt{\frac{P_0}{V_0}+0}=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{2}\sigma _r}\sqrt{\frac{\eta T}{2\delta t}}\left(1\frac{\eta }{2}\right)P^{T/(2\delta t)}$$
(A5)
For a given integration time $`T`$ and minimum read time $`\delta t`$, the maximum $`SN_{FC}`$ occurs with duty cycle $`\eta =2/3`$. If we plug this back into Equation A5, we get

$$SN_F=\frac{2}{3}\frac{FT}{\sqrt{2}\sigma _r}\sqrt{\frac{T}{3\delta t}}P^{T/(2\delta t)}$$
(A6)
From here, it is possible to find the value of $`T`$ which gives the best signal-to-noise for a single observation; it occurs at $`T=3\delta t/\mathrm{ln}(P)`$. If, however, we consider the observation as a series of $`M`$ equal observations with a specific total observation time, $`T_{obs}`$, the signal-to-noise for the series is

$$SN_{FC}^{^{}}=\frac{FT\sqrt{M}}{3\sigma _r}\sqrt{\frac{2T}{3\delta t}}P^{T/(2\delta t)}=\frac{FT\sqrt{T_{obs}}}{3\sigma _r\sqrt{T}}\sqrt{\frac{2T}{3\delta t}}P^{T/2\delta t}$$
(A7)
If we hold $`T_{obs}`$ constant and find the optimum $`T`$, we find that it is $`T=2\delta t/\mathrm{ln}(P)`$. In either case, it is important to note that, in there is an optimal value for $`T`$, and extending the observation beyond that time will ruin the data.

It is worth noting that the result assumes that all cosmic ray events can be identified a posteriori. This is not necessarily the case, particularly when it is considered that, in the one-image case, the fraction of pixels surviving without a cosmic ray impact is $`P^{3/\mathrm{ln}(P)}=e^30.05`$; for the multi-image case, the fraction of survivors is $`P^{2/\mathrm{ln}(P)}=e^20.14`$. In both cases, the number of “good” pixels is so low that separating them from the impacted pixels will not be a trivial task. For example, the median operation would not be able to identify a good samples, as more than half of the samples would be impacted by cosmic rays. In practice, the detector will often saturate before this limit is reached, but this shorter integration time means that less-than-optimal signal-to-noise will be obtained.

Up-the-Ramp sampling reduces the effect of read noise to $`\sigma _r^{}=\sigma _r\sqrt{\frac{12}{N}}`$, for N uniformly-spaced samples with equal weighting (which is the optimal weighting for the read-noise limited case). When a pixel is impacted by a cosmic ray, the Up-the-Ramp algorithm preserves the “good” data for that pixel. The exact quality of the preserved data depends on the number of cosmic ray hits and their timing within the observation. For example, a cosmic ray hit which just trims off the last sample in the sequence has minimal impact compared to a cosmic ray hit that occurs in the middle of the observation sequence. The variance of a Uniformly-sampled sequence with $`N_i`$ samples is proportional to $`1/N_i(N_i+1)(N_i1)`$. If an Up-the-Ramp sequence is broken into $`i`$ chunks by a cosmic ray, the variance becomes

$$V_i=V_U\frac{N(N+1)(N1)}{_{j=0}^i(N_j)(N_j+1)(N_j1)}$$
(A8)
When there are zero cosmic ray events, of course, $`V_0=V_U`$. If there is one cosmic ray event during the sequence, the variance becomes

$$V_1=V_U\frac{N(N+1)(N1)}{N_i(N_i+1)(N_i1)+(NN_i)(NN_i+1)(NN_i1)}$$
(A9)
If we assume (as is reasonable) that the cosmic ray events are randomly distributed over time and find the expectation value for all values of $`0\mathrm{}N_i\mathrm{}N`$, we find that the typical $`V_1V_U2`$ (plus a small term in $`N^1`$, which we will ignore for simplicity). If we perform a similar computation for two cosmic ray events, we find that $`V_2V_U10/3`$ (again, plus lower-order terms which we ignore). In general, we find that it is possible to find a valid result with a finite (although not necessarily pretty) variance for any sequence broken up by cosmic ray events provided we have at least 2 consecutive “good” samples (for all practical purposes, we can ignore the situation where this is not the case). To simplify the following, we will simplify by considering only 3 cases: The no-cosmic-ray case $`V_0=V_U`$, the one-cosmic-ray case $`V_1=2V_U`$ and all multiple-cosmic-ray cases combined as one, $`V_{2+}=V_U/ϵ^2`$, where $`ϵ^2`$ is a small but non-zero number, roughly 0.3.

The Up-the-Ramp signal-to-noise function for the read-noise limited case (Garnett & Forrest, 1993, Eqn. 20) is

$$SN_U=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{2}\sigma _r}\sqrt{\frac{N^21}{6N}}=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{V_U}}$$
(A10)
We combine the variances in the 3 possible cases with the three-case equivalent to Equation A2, and thus arrive at

$$SN_{UC}=FT\left(\frac{P_0}{V_0}+\frac{P_1}{V_1}+\frac{P_{2+}}{V_{2+}}\right)^{1/2}=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{V_U}}\left(P_0+\frac{P_1}{2}+ϵP_{2+}\right)^{1/2}$$
(A11)
where $`P_i`$ is the probability of a pixel being impacted by $`i`$ cosmic rays during the integration. We note, as did Garnett & Forrest, that there would be no reason to limit the number of samples to anything less than the maximum possible number, so we can set $`N=T/\delta t`$. Using the definition of $`P`$ described earlier, $`P_0=P^{T/\delta t}`$, $`P_1=(T/\delta t)(1P)P^{T/\delta t1}`$ and $`P_{2+}=1(P_0+P_1)`$. Putting these values back into Equation A11, we get:

$$SN_{UC}=\frac{FT}{\sqrt{2}\sigma _r}\sqrt{\frac{T^2\delta t^2}{6T\delta t}}\left[(1ϵ)P^{T/\delta t}+(1ϵ)\frac{T}{\delta t}(1P)P^{T/\delta t1}+ϵ\right]^{1/2}$$
(A12)
If we seek the maximum value of $`SN_{UC}`$ with respect to $`T`$, we find that $`(SN_{UC})/T>0`$, provided $`T\delta t`$ (otherwise we’d have an integration shorter than 1 sample time, which would be useless), $`P0`$ and $`0<ϵ<1`$ (both of which are true by construction). This result applies equally whether we are considering one independent integration or a series of observations to be combined further downstream. As the derivative is strictly positive, the signal-to-noise continues to increase with as sample time increases, although as $`T\mathrm{}`$, the gain in signal-to-noise asymptotically approaches zero. So, extending the observing time while using Up-the-Ramp sampling with cosmic ray rejection does not damage the data (although we might be spending time with little or no gain). As noted earlier for the Fowler-sampling case, there is an optimal observing time, beyond which further observation reduces the overall signal-to-noise.