Noise free detectors in the visible and infrared: Implications for the design of next-generation AO systems and large telescopes.

This paper is intended to discuss the impact of noiseless CCD detectors in three significant areas of the development of large telescopes and the instruments that go on them. These are (1) CCDs that have all the characteristics that we are used to seeing in CCDs can now be made with negligible readout noise even at higher pixel rates (> 10 MHz) and will allow rather different approaches to the design of instrument is generally, (2) the technique of achieving diffraction limited imaging in ground-based telescopes known as Lucky Astronomy in which images are taken at high speed has been demonstrated to work under a variety of different conditions and (3) some suggestions as to how these methods may be applied directly to much larger diameter telescopes in order to achieve high resolution imaging and spectroscopy without the expense of laser guide stars or multi-conjugate adaptive optics.