Fasti Noise in the Lab

3 Mar 2004
During the last phase of work on Fasti, before the shipping to TNG, we performed some noise measurements. We used the two available quadrants of the NICS engineer grade detector.
We evaluated the RON (Read Out Noise) with the procedure described in (Hunt, 94). The result, to be taken only as an indication of possible performances of the global system, is very interesting. All reads have been taken with a 400Khz read out. The quadrant 1 had a differential amplifier, and got a noise of 5.6 counts (integrations up to 10 s) and 4.5 counts (integrations up to 50 s) The quadrant 4 had a non differential amplifier, and got a noise of 3.5 counts (integrations up to 10 s) and 2.6 counts (integrations up to 50 s)
The equivalence between counts and elecrons inside the detector, has to be measured, but design estimate lead to 8 electrons/counts.

The data