Diagnostics of the CCD using the mesh experiment

We present here the results of a mesh experiment with which we can measure the shape of a charge cloud generated by the photoabsorption of X-rays inside a charge-coupled device (CCD). The mesh used is made of gold of 13-μm thickness, and has many holes of 1.4 μm diameter spaced 48 μm apart. The CCD used has 12 μm square pixels. A new criterion with which we can determine the precise alignment in the experiment is introduced to eliminate uncertainties. We measured the charge cloud size at three X-ray energies: Al-K (1.5 keV), Mo-L (2.3 keV) and Ti-K (4.5 keV). The shapes can be well represented not by a point-symmetric Gaussian function, but by an axial symmetric Gaussian function with σ of 0.7–1.5 μm. The charge cloud size depends weakly on the mean absorption length in silicon. We find that the charge cloud size can be well explained by a simple model inside the CCD. We discuss that the knowledge of the charge cloud size will enable us to improve the position resolution of the CCD.