Mike Rousos with Richard Schnee

Simulation of Neutron Background for One Ton Dark Matter Detectors

One of the difficult sources of background particles in WIMP dark matter searches is due to high-energy neutrons produced by cosmic-ray muons interacting in the material near the detector apparatus. A one-ton, segmented detector may be able to reject nearly all of this background because a single neutron would usually scatter in multiple detectors, while a WIMP would scatter in only a single detector. To test how well such a detector would reject this background, a numerical “Monte Carlo” simulation will be performed to simulate the transport and interactions of neutrons near the segmented detector. The results of this study will indicate how many separate detectors are needed, and how large a neutron background could be rejected with this technique.

    To create the Monte Carlo simulations, I will learn to use the GEANT 4 toolkit to model particles’ travel through matter. I will then learn about existing detectors so that I can model them appropriately with GEANT 4 and C++.