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

The Pixel detector is a crucial part of the ATLAS detector and all the performance of the tracking system is based on its features. The tracking performance of the ATLAS detector relies critically on its 4-layer Pixel detector, that has undergone significant hardware and readout upgrades to meet the challenges imposed by the higher collision energy, pileup and luminosity that are being delivered by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with record breaking instantaneous luminosities of 2 X 10 34 cm-2 s-1 recently exceeded. The key status and the performance metrics of the ATLAS Pixel Detector are summarized, and the operational experience and requirements to ensure optimum data quality and data taking efficiency will be described, with special emphasis to radiation damage experience.