Speaker
Description
The PICO-500L detector will be a 500 litre bubble chamber designed to search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP). The experiment will cover a large range of mass and cross section parameter space, proving a variety of theoretical models. The PICO collaboration has built a well established technology, easily scalable and relatively inexpensive with flexibility to easily exchange targets following a discovery. PICO-500L will be located two kilometres underground at SNOLAB, with the goal to maintain all backgrounds below one event per year. A careful study has been made using GEANT4 to provide guidance on the material and components purity, as well as shielding requirements, with the goal to maintain the overall neutron budget to less than one per year. Results from a detailed Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the expected backgrounds in the detector using $C_3F_8$ as target material will be presented in this talk.
