Faint flux performance of an EMCCD

Thorough numerical simulations were run to test the performance of three processing methods of the data coming out from an electron multiplying charge coupled device (EMCCD), or low light level charge coupled device (L3CCD), operated at high gain, under real operating conditions. The effect of read-out noise and spurious charges is tested under various low flux conditions (0.001 event/pixel/frame < f < 20 events/pixel/frame). Moreover, a method for finding the value of the gain applied by the EMCCD amplification register is also developed. It allows one to determine the gain value to an accuracy of a fraction of a percent from dark frames alone.