This package compares photon rates sampled from Poisson distributions representing noise (sky-background and read noise) and signal. It attempts to find the lowest signal rate one can make reliably detect given some read noise and sky-background photon rates.

• signal_noise_generator.py: This script contains the function "generator" which takes as input the number of exposures (num_exp), sky photon rate (rate),. read noise rate (read), and the signal photon rate (sig). It calls the Poisson instance of the Random class to generate two arrays of size (1,num_exp) representing the signal and noise samples.

• poisson_analysis.py This script is the only one that takes user input. It takes as input the number of exposures (-Nexp), sky photon rate (-sky), read noise rate (-read). The script then calls signal_noise_generator.py and calculates p-vals for each pair signal/noise sample pairs. The result is creation of a directory specific to the run that contains text files of the p-values, signals, and noises along with a PDF that plots p-values as a function of signal rate.

• Random.py Random class which generates random samples; includes Poisson instance used in this package.

python poisson_analysis -Nexp 10 -read 1 -sky 5

This code requires:

• Python 3.7.3
• Scipy v1.6.0
• Numpy v1.19.2
• MatplotLib v3.3.2
• TQDM v4.56.0