| PICO500 is an upcoming dark matter experiment searching for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) dark matter. The experiment is a 500L bubble chamber and is currently in the design phase. This thesis presents simulations of neutron backgrounds which will be incident on the PICO500 detector, the results of which indicate that the rate of single-bubble events caused by backgrounds will be <1.67 events/year in the case of internal backgrounds, and <2.18 events/year in the case of external backgrounds, assuming a muon veto efficiency of 80%. Also presented is a new piece of simulation code which allows for the consistent simulation of muon-induced-neutrons using Geant4 and an analysis of the efficiency of the simulated muon veto. |
