Statistics of electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices

Electron-multiplying charge-coupled devices are efficient imaging for low-surface-brightness ultraviolet astronomy from space. The large amplification allows photon counting (PC), the detection of events versus nonevents. This paper provides statistics observation process, photon-counting and compression. expression signal-to-noise PC is written in terms polygamma function. optimal exposure time a function clock-induced charge. exact distribution process simple-to-compute powered matrix. cutoff comparing to read noise close strong weak electron-multiplying gain rate. A formula gives expected compression