Operation and performance of the ICARUS-T600 cryogenic plant at Gran Sasso underground Laboratory

Abstract

ICARUS T600 liquid argon time projection chamber is the first large mass electronic detector of a new generation able to combine the imaging capabilities of the old bubble chambers with the excellent calorimetric energy measurement. After the three months demonstration run on surface in Pavia during 2001, the T600 cryogenic plant was significantly revised, in terms of reliability and safety, in view of its long-term operation in an underground environment. The T600 detector was activated in Hall B of the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory during Spring 2010, where it was operated without interruption for about three years, taking data exposed to the CERN to Gran Sasso long baseline neutrino beam and cosmic rays. In this paper the T600 cryogenic plant is described in detail together with the commissioning procedures that lead to the successful operation of the detector shortly after the end of the filling with liquid Argon. Overall plant performance and stability during the long-term underground operation are discussed. Finally, the decommissioning procedures, carried out about six months after the end of the CNGS neutrino beam operation, are reported.

27 pages; corrected typos; added references and reshuffled reference list (not in order of citation in previous version) 26 pages; forced figures within section; corrected typos

References in corpus (8)

• Improved Search for ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }\to {\bar{\nu }}_e$ Oscillations in the MiniBooNE Experiment
• First results from a Dark Matter search with liquid Argon at 87 K in the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory
• Underground Neutrino Detectors for Particle and Astroparticle Science: the Giant Liquid Argon Charge Imaging ExpeRiment (GLACIER)
• Search for anomalies in the νe appearance from a νμ beam
• Precise 3D track reconstruction algorithm for the ICARUS T600 liquid argon time projection chamber detector
• A new, very massive modular Liquid Argon Imaging Chamber to detect low energy off-axis neutrinos from the CNGS beam. (Project MODULAr)
• Experimental observation of an extremely high electron lifetime with the ICARUS-T600 LAr-TPC
• The trigger system of the ICARUS experiment for the CNGS beam

Cited by in corpus (6)

• The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab
• Status of Light Sterile Neutrino Searches
• Direct detection of primordial black hole relics as dark matter
• Enhanced low-energy supernova burst detection in large liquid argon time projection chambers enabled by Q-Pix
• Study of space charge in the ICARUS T600 detector
• Cryogenic bath-type heat exchangers for ultra-pure noble gas applications