Performance of the ATLAS Tau Trigger with 7 TeV Collision Data at the LHC

Tau leptons are a fundamental ingredient in the discovery of New Physics at the LHC. Many models for physics beyond the Standard Model predict an increase in the production of tau leptons. The reconstruction of hadronic tau decays at the trigger level, although a very challenging task in proton-proton collision environments, allows us to double the sample of tau decays collected, and provides additional discovery power to final states which include tau leptons. In this contribution we show the present understanding of the tau trigger system in recent proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector. We present the most relevant quantities used in the different stages of the trigger selection, and the trigger efficiencies as a function of ET using tau-like QCD events passing the offline reconstruction and identification selection. We also present the prospects for tau trigger measurements with real taus from W and Z decays involving taus.