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DATA ANALYSIS SOFTWARE FOR THE ATLAS EXPERIMENT

Final Activity Report Summary - ATLAS-COMPUTING (Data analysis software for the atlas experiment)

The research objective of the project encompasses a direct contribution to the development of the ATLAS data analysis software. The applicant would participate strongly in the preparation of the ATLAS Data Challenges and in the validation of the ATLAS Computing Model, which is based on GRID technology.

Part of the project was to participate in the development of the offline reconstruction software and of the software infrastructure needed for the physics analysis. The conclusion of her work was the demonstration of the full ATLAS data analysis chain in a large scale GRID production and the subsequent physics validation of the results.

The challenge which was defined as main priority in ATLAS at the time the fellow started was the combined test beam in which a full ATLAS barrel slice would take data with different particle beams and at different energies. The fellow contributed to the preparations of the offline reconstruction software so that it could be applied to real data for the first time, especially in what concerns the inner detector but being also responsible of the integration of all different sub-detectors reconstruction. For the case of the inner detector, that also implied the contribution to the redesign of the software according to the recommendations of an ATLAS internal review. She has also actively participated in the different analysis performed. Simulation and reconstruction of these data was done making use of the GRID technology.

After the combined test beam, which was considered as the first commissioning phase, the inner detector commissioning went on with several cosmic runs at sea level with different parts of the detector, before being installed in the ATLAS cavern. The fellow was responsible of the coordination of all the software related activities that were needed for the different commissioning phases (simulation, reconstruction, monitoring, conditions databases, alignment, calibrations and data analysis). The inner detector software could be validated with real data and at the same time was used to provide feedback to the data quality and detector performance.

As a summary, this project has contributed to the readiness of the inner detector software for the LHC turn-on, by contributing to the development of the new design and by applying it for the first time to real data from test beams and cosmic runs.