by Dr Lauren Tompkins
(DESY)
The spectacular performance of the LHC machine challenged the ATLAS and CMS detectors to contend with an average of 25 proton-proton interactions per beam crossing in 2012. Projections for 14 TeV running in 2015 and beyond suggest that the detectors should prepare for up to 80 interactions per crossing. In these dense environments, identifying the physics objects of interest, such as isolated leptons, taus and b-jets is of paramount importance for a successful physics program. The ATLAS experiment is developing a hardware based track finder, FTK, which will perform full silicon detector tracking within 100 microseconds of a Level 1 trigger accept at luminosities of 3x10^34 cm^-2 s^-1, significantly improving the track-based isolation, secondary vertex tagging and track-based tau finding done at Level 2. I will discuss the FTK design and performance prospects, as well as report on successful prototype tests completed thus far.