{
  "abstract": "Measuring rapid astrophysical phenomena requires many short exposures, which suffer from repeated read noise. A variety of recent technologies are achieving sub-electron read noise, which enable rapid time-domain studies of faint sources. These data can be analyzed with traditional methods, but the ability to resolve individual electrons enables a new class of more precise, photon-counting techniques. We present a photon-counting method for sub-electron read noise detectors which delivers optimal statistical uncertainties. We focus on Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) detectors and demonstrate our method on optical data collected by CMOS instrument \"proto-Lightspeed,\" recently commissioned at the Magellan Clay telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. The method can be applied to non-CMOS detectors as well, such as skipper CCDs and linear-mode avalanche photodiodes. The method substantially improves analysis of faint sources, increasing signal to noise ratios by up to $\\sim 130\\%$, which would require 5.3$\\times$ more observing time to accomplish with data alone. As an example we show detections of four normal rotation-powered pulsars with confirmed optical pulses, achieved in under two hours of total exposure. We provide the lightspeedpy pipeline for reducing proto-Lightspeed data with both photon counting and standard techniques.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.07137",
  "author_total": 12,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Jack T. Dinsmore"
    },
    {
      "name": "Christopher Layden"
    },
    {
      "name": "Roger W. Romani"
    },
    {
      "name": "Vera L. Berger"
    },
    {
      "name": "Kevin B. Burdge"
    },
    {
      "name": "Geoffrey Mo"
    },
    {
      "name": "Deepto Chakrabarty"
    },
    {
      "name": "Emma T. Chickles"
    },
    {
      "name": "Gabor Furesz"
    },
    {
      "name": "Juliana García-Mejía"
    },
    {
      "name": "Dave Osip"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jack Piotrowski"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/3wftc773fy6pa.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.07137",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "3wftc773fy6pa",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07137",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.HE"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.IM"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3105|Astronomy and Astrophysical Research"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221037379",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.07137",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-05",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/3wftc773fy6pa.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:27:22Z",
      "native_id": "2610.07137",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.07137"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.HE",
      "subfield": "high-energy-astrophysics"
    },
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.IM",
      "subfield": "instrumentation-methods"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Optimal Photon Counting with Fast, Low Noise Astronomical Imagers",
  "title_text": "Optimal Photon Counting with Fast, Low Noise Astronomical Imagers",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:27:22Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/3wftc773fy6pa",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}