Operational Experience and Performance with the ATLAS Pixel detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

During Run 2, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) provided challenging running conditions for the ATLAS detector, and especially for the ATLAS Pixel Detector. This is the closest detector to the beam line, facing the highest event rate and radiation fluence. Despite the difficult environment, the Pixel detector has shown stable performance during data-taking, recording high quality data with high efficiency. However some lessons have been learned from the Run 2 operations, important for planning the coming Run 3. In particular, an understanding of the effects caused by radiation damage of the detector is crucial. Therefore dedicated measurements and simulations have been performed with the dataset collected in Run 2.