The ICARUS Expriment at LNGS Underground Laboratory

Abstract

ICARUS (Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals) is, so far, the largest Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LAr-TPC containing ~ 600 tons of LAr) addressed to the study of “rare events” and, among them, neutrino interactions. Installed and operating underground, at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (INFN-LNGS, Italy), ICARUS started working gradually since summer 2010, collecting events from both, the cosmic rays able to reach the depth of the laboratory, and from CNGS neutrino beam. The detector, providing a completely uniform imaging and calorimetry with a high accuracy on massive volumes, allows for complete event reconstruction. The detection technique, as well as detector main features and performances are here described. The recent measurement of the velocity of neutrinos with short bunched CNGS beam, consistent with the speed of light, and the search for the analogue to Cherenkov radiation effect for superluminal neutrinos are presented.