By using the ATLAS detector, observations have been made of a centrality-dependent dijet asymmetry in the collisions of lead ions at the Large Hadron Collider. In a sample of lead-lead events with a per-nucleon center of mass energy of 2.76 TeV, selected with a minimum bias trigger, jets are reconstructed in fine-grained, longitudinally segmented electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters. The transverse energies of dijets in opposite hemispheres are observed to become systematically more unbalanced with increasing event centrality leading to a large number of events which contain highly asymmetric dijets. This is the first observation of an enhancement of events with such large dijet asymmetries, not observed in proton-proton collisions, which may point to an interpretation in terms of strong jet energy loss in a hot, dense medium.

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The silicon pixel tracking system for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is described and the performance requirements are summarized. Detailed descriptions of the pixel detector electronics and the silicon sensors are given. The design, fabrication, assembly and performance of the pixel detector modules are presented. Data obtained from test beams as well as studies using cosmic rays are also discussed.

The luminosity determination for the ATLAS detector at the LHC during pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV in 2012 is presented. The evaluation of the luminosity scale is performed using several luminometers, and comparisons between these luminosity detectors are made to assess the accuracy, consistency and long-term stability of the results. A luminosity uncertainty of δL/L = ±1.9% is obtained for the 22.7 fb −1 of pp collision data delivered to ATLAS at √ s = 8 TeV in 2012.

A measurement of the cross section for the inclusive production of isolated prompt photons in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy ffiffi ffi s p ¼ 7 TeV is presented. The measurement covers the pseudorapidity ranges j j < 1:37 and 1:52 j j < 1:81 in the transverse energy range 15 E T < 100 GeV. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 880 nb À1 , collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Photon candidates are identified by combining information from the calorimeters and from the inner tracker. Residual background in the selected sample is estimated from data based on the observed distribution of the transverse isolation energy in a narrow cone around the photon candidate. The results are compared to predictions from next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations.