Effects of Low Temperature Proton Irradiation on a Large Area CCD for Astrometric Applications

Charge transfer and dark current effects are compared for regions of a large area 4500 × 1966 pixel CCD irradiated with 7.4 MeV protons at −130°C and at room temperature. Post-annealing measurements were also performed. Although there are differences in the concentration of individual defects following warm and cold irradiation and after subsequent annealing steps, these differences were less than a factor 3.5 (and in most cases a factor 2) — with the room temperature irradiation giving a good estimate of the effects except for traps with emission time constant ∼ 4 ms.