ATLAS status

Abstract

The emphasis of the ATLAS project has shifted from distributed construction of the detector components to their integration at CERN on the surface, and most importantly, to their final installation and commissioning in the underground cavern. The detector construction is today (September 2005) more than 85% complete. The barrel calorimeter systems are installed in the underground cavern, the central solenoid and barrel toroid system the same, and the muon chamber installation has started. Off-detector parts, both for the ATLAS Data Acquisition and Detector Control Systems, and for the readout of the various detector parts, and services installation are ongoing. As the detector parts are being installed, their electronics are mounted, tested and commissioned. The first cosmic rays events have been observed in the barrel hadronic calorimeter system. Completion and preparation of the remaining parts of ATLAS, as for example Inner Detector parts, Muon chambers, End-cap/Forward calorimeter systems, and the Endcap Toroid System, are ongoing in the institutes or at CERN. In parallel distributed computing and physics analysis are being set up and exercised with large simulated data samples, embedded in the LHC Computing Grid Project framework.