The ATLAS Inner Detector commissioning and calibration

Abstract

The ATLAS Inner Detector is a composite tracking system consisting of silicon pixels, silicon strips and straw tubes in a 2 T magnetic field. Its installation was completed in August 2008 and the detector took part in data-taking with single LHC beams and cosmic rays. The initial detector operation, hardware commissioning and insitu calibrations are described. Tracking performance has been measured with 7.6 million cosmic-ray events, collected using a tracking trigger and reconstructed with modular pattern-recognition and fitting software. The intrinsic hit efficiency and tracking trigger efficiencies are close to 100%. Lorentz angle measurements for both electrons and holes, specific energy-loss calibration and transition radiation turn-on measurements have been performed. Different alignment techniques have been used to reconstruct the detector geometry. After the initial alignment, a transverse impact parameter resolution of 22.1 ± 0.9 μm and a relative momentum resolution σp/p = (4.83 ± 0.16) × 10⁻⁴ GeV⁻¹ ×pT have been measured for high momentum tracks.