Performance of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter

The Tile Calorimeter is the central section ($0 < |eta| < 1.7$) of the ATLAS hadronic calorimeter. It is a key detector for the measurement of hadrons, jets, tau leptons decaying hadronically, and missing transverse energy. Because of its very good signal to noise ratio it is also useful for the identification and reconstruction of muons. The calorimeter consists of thin steel plates and 460,000 scintillating tiles configured into 4900 cells, each viewed by two photomultipliers. The calorimeter response is monitored to better than 1% using radioactive source, laser, and electronic charge injection systems. The calibration and performance of the calorimeter have been established through test beam measurements, cosmic ray muons and the large sample of pp collisions acquired during 2011 and 2012. Results on the calorimeter performance will be presented, including the absolute energy scale, time resolution, and associated stabilities. These results demonstrate that the Tile Calorimeter is performing well within the design requirements and is giving essential input to the physics results.