Particle Identification with the ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker

The ATLAS Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT) is the outermost of the three sub-systems of the ATLAS Inner Detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. In addition to its tracking capabilities, the TRT provides particle identification (PID) ability through the detection of transition radiation X-ray photons. The latter functionality provides substantial discriminating power between electrons and hadrons in the momentum range from 1 to 200 GeV. These proceedings present the commissioning of TRT PID during early 2010 7 TeV data taking. Performance in 2010 and 2011 demonstrating the TRT's ability to identify electrons, complementary to calorimeter based identification methods, will also be shown.