Commissioning of the ATLAS Electron and Photon Trigger Selection

Since the start-up of the LHC end of 2009, the trigger commissioning is in full swing. The ATLAS trigger system is divided into three levels: the hardware-based first level trigger, and the software-based second level trigger and Event Filter, collectively referred to as the High Level Trigger (HLT). Initially, events have been selected online based on the Level-1 selections with the HLT algorithms run but not rejecting any events. This has been an important step in the commissioning of these triggers to ensure their correct functioning and subsequently to enable the HLT selections. Due to increasing LHC luminosity and the large QCD cross section, this has been a vital step to select leptons from J/Psi, bottom, charm, W and Z decays. This presentation gives an overview of the trigger performance of the electron and photon selection. Comparisons of the online selection variables with the offline reconstruction are shown as well as comparisons of data with MC simulations on which the current selection tuning is performed. Finally, an outlook will be given on the strategy how the electron and photon menus will evolve with increasing luminosities.