Charge diffusion in CCD X-ray detectors

Critical to the detection of X-rays by CCDs, is the detailed process of charge diffusion and drift within the device. We reexamine the prescriptions currently used in the modeling of X-ray CCD detectors to provide analytic expressions for the charge distribution over the CCD pixels which are suitable for use in numerical simulations of CCD response. Our treatment results in models which predict charge distributions which are more centrally peaked and have flatter wings than the Gaussian shapes predicted by previous work and adopted in current CCD modeling codes.