a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber for the Solar Neutrino Problem

The construction and successful test of a large liquid argon time projection chamber prototype detector is presented. This effort is a part of the ICARUS project which is aimed at the development of new detector techniques to uncover the very rare events like proton decay and solar neutrinos. The construction and test of this detector has been carried out at CERN from 1989 until the present time. The charge lifetime measured is 3.19 +/- 0.13 ms. We also report on a precision measurement of lifetime by a laser monitoring chamber and the operation of the recirculation system essential to keeping liquid for a long time. We show that a liquid argon detector is very well suited to study mass-enhanced neutrino oscillation (MSW effect) from the Sun by detecting simultaneous two modes of reaction. Ratio of two modes provides a model independent probe of neutrino oscillation, free of deviations from different solar models. Contour plots are presented at various threshold energies.