The ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter has been operating continuously since August 2006. At this time, only part of the calorimeter was readout, but since the beginning of 2008, all calorimeter cells have been connected to the ATLAS readout system in preparation for LHC collisions. This paper gives an overview of the liquid argon calorimeter performance measured in situ with random triggers, calibration data, cosmic muons, and LHC beam splash events. Results on the detector operation, timing perfore-mail: atlas.secretariat@cern.ch mance, electronics noise, and gain stability are presented. High energy deposits from radiative cosmic muons and beam splash events allow to check the intrinsic constant term of the energy resolution. The uniformity of the electromagnetic barrel calorimeter response along η (averaged over φ) is measured at the percent level using minimum ionizing cosmic muons. Finally, studies of electromagnetic showers from radiative muons have been used to cross-check the Monte Carlo simulation. The performance results obtained using the ATLAS readout, data acquisition, and reconstruction software indicate that the liquid argon calorimeter is well-prepared for collisions at the dawn of the LHC era.

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In 2004, a combined system test was performed in the H8 beam line at the CERN SPS with a setup reproducing the geometry of sectors of the ATLAS Muon Spectrometer, formed by three stations of Monitored Drift Tubes (MDT). The full AT-LAS analysis chain was used to obtain the results presented in this paper. The basic design performances of the Muon Spectrometer were verified. The stability of MDT calibration constants, the alignment system using optical devices and high energy tracks, as well as the intrinsic sagitta resolution of the Muon Spectrometer were studied and found to agree with expectations. The reconstruction of muon tracks using the combined information from both the Inner Detector and the Muon Spectrometer are also presented.

The ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter has been operating continuously since August 2006. At this time, only part of the calorimeter was readout, but since the beginning of 2008, all calorimeter cells have been connected to the ATLAS readout system in preparation for LHC collisions. This paper gives an overview of the liquid argon calorimeter performance measured in situ with random triggers, calibration data, cosmic muons, and LHC beam splash events. Results on the detector operation, timing perfore-mail: atlas.secretariat@cern.ch mance, electronics noise, and gain stability are presented. High energy deposits from radiative cosmic muons and beam splash events allow to check the intrinsic constant term of the energy resolution. The uniformity of the electromagnetic barrel calorimeter response along η (averaged over φ) is measured at the percent level using minimum ionizing cosmic muons. Finally, studies of electromagnetic showers from radiative muons have been used to cross-check the Monte Carlo simulation. The performance results obtained using the ATLAS readout, data acquisition, and reconstruction software indicate that the liquid argon calorimeter is well-prepared for collisions at the dawn of the LHC era.

For the muon spectrometer of the ATLAS detector at the large hadron collider (LHC), large drift chambers consisting of 6 to 8 layers of pressurized drift tubes are used for precision tracking covering an active area of 5000 m 2 in the toroidal field of superconducting air core magnets. The chambers have to provide a spatial resolution of 41 µm with Ar:CO2 (93:7) gas mixture at an absolute pressure of 3 bar and gas gain of 2·10 4 . The environment in which the chambers will be operated is characterized by high neutron and γ background with counting rates of up to 100 s −1 cm −2 . The resolution and efficiency of a chamber from the serial production for ATLAS has been investigated in a 100 GeV muon beam at photon irradiation rates as expected during LHC operation. A silicon strip detector telescope was used as external reference in the beam. The spatial resolution of a chamber is degraded by 4 µm at the highest background rate. The detection efficiency of the drift tubes is unchanged under irradiation. A tracking efficiency of 98% at the highest rates has been demonstrated.