The ATLAS Hadronic Tau Trigger

Triggering on tau events will not only help in understanding Standard Model (SM) pro- cesses, but will also contribute greatly to the discovery potential of the ATLAS detector e.g. through searches for the Higgs boson and supersymmetric particles. Since leptonic decays of taus can be triggered using the muon and electron triggers, a dedicated hadronic tau trig- ger is highly important for sensisitivity to new physics. We present an overview of the tau trigger in 2011, the improvements made for 2012, and show that it performed remarkably well in 2011, and so it is expected for 2012. We discuss current challenges as well as a future outlook.