Laura Boon with Daniel Akerib

Monte Carlo Simulations of a Neutron Detector

Current work on dark matter points toward Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) as the leading candidate.  As suggested by their name, these particles do not interact electrically with matter but rather through their gravitational fields. WIMPs are detected in the <10keV region that coincides with a background of spallation neutrons. These spallation neutrons occur when a high-energy neutron (~60MeV) collides with the Pb shielding around the detector.  The difference between a neutron and WIMP detection is the number of events recorded in a small, approximately 25 microsecond, time frame.  The spallation neutrons are detected in “bundles”, whereas WIMPs will create single isolated events. A new gadolinium-loaded water detector is currently being designed and built to detect these low energy background neutrons. Results from Monte Carlo simulations will create “benchmark” measurements of background neutrons that penetrate our shielding and mimic the signal created by a WIMP.