ICARUS and Status of Liquid Argon Technology

Abstract: ICARUS is the largest liquid argon TPC detector ever built (~600 ton LAr mass). It operates underground at the LNGS laboratory in Gran Sasso. It has been smoothly running since summer 2010, collecting data with the CNGS beam and with cosmics. Liquid argon TPCs are really "electronic bubble chamber" providing a completely uniform imaging and calorimetry with unprecedented accuracy on massive volumes. ICARUS is internationally considered as a milestone towards the realization of the next generation of massive detectors (~tens of ktons) for neutrino and rare event physics. Results will be presented on the data collected during 2010 with the detector at LNGS.