Status of ICARUS

TL;DR

The ICARUS liquid argon detector is a large-scale, high-resolution device capable of detailed 3D imaging and calorimetry for neutrino physics and proton decay, demonstrating mature technology and effective performance in a test run.

Contribution

This paper reports the successful construction and testing of a 600-ton liquid argon detector, validating its performance for non-accelerator physics applications.

Findings

High-quality 3D imaging and calorimetry achieved

Effective particle identification demonstrated

Detector performance validated with cosmic ray data

Abstract

The ICARUS detector is a liquid argon time projection chamber. It provides three dimensional imaging and calorimetry of ionizing particles over a large volume, with high granularity. Its Physics program includes the study of atmospheric, solar, supernovae and beam neutrinos as well as proton decay searches. The ICARUS technology has reached maturity with the construction and test (during summer 2001) of a 600 ton detector, demonstrating the feasibility of building large mass devices relevant for non-accelerator physics. During this test run, more than 27000 cosmic ray events have been acquired. These data allow to assess the detector performance, i.e. the spatial reconstruction, calorimetry and particle identification.