Performance of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter

The Tile Calorimeter is the central section of the ATLAS hadronic calorimeter. It is a key detector for the measurement of hadrons, jets, tau leptons 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 in 2011 and 2012. Results on the calorimeter performance are presented, including the absolute energy scale, time resolution, and associated stabilities. In addition to the measurement of the energy and direction of hadronic showers and particles, the calorimeter determines the arrival time of the particles. A precise measurement of the time information is required for signal reconstruction, background removal, and in the analysis of the collision data. Studies of the timing performance of the TileCal performed with isolated muons as well as with jets from collision events are also shown. The results all demonstrate that the Tile Calorimeter is performing well within the design requirements and is giving essential input to the physics results.