We discuss a novel use of the Geant4 simulation toolkit to model molecular
transport in a vacuum environment, in the molecular flow regime. The Geant4
toolkit was originally developed by the high energy physics community to
simulate the interactions of elementary particles within complex detector
systems. Here its capabilities are utilized to model molecular vacuum transport
in geometries where other techniques are impractical. The techniques are
verified with an application representing a simple vacuum geometry that has
been studied previously both analytically and by basic Monte Carlo simulation.
We discuss the use of an application with a very complicated geometry, that of
the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope camera cryostat, to determine probabilities
of transport of contaminant molecules to optical surfaces where control of
contamination is crucial.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, to appear in IJMSSC, updated to
accepted versio