A Toroidal Large Aperture Spectrometer (ATLAS) is a general-purpose detector that will exploit the full potential of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) proton-proton collision program. The LHC will provide 10 times higher center-of-mass energy and 1000 times higher proton-proton collision rates than previous colliders. This opens up new frontiers of physics which ATLAS will explore. The Standard Model, which is the established theoretical description of the basic building blocks of matter and of the fundamental interactions, has several unexplored aspects, all well within the reach of ATLAS. ATLAS will greatly increase the resolving power with which the size of the building blocks of matter, the quarks and leptons, can be measured.
The discovery of the Z and W particles was a large step forward in the understanding of fundamental interactions. ATLAS will be able to discover and measure particles with similar properties but with masses up to 50 times larger than those of the W and Z. ATLAS is designed for a large discovery potential and for precision measurements.
The detector designs are based on extensive R&D within the collaboration and display many innovative features. Over a period of six years, prototypes of progressively increasing scale, together with simulations, have been used to optimize the performance to meet the ATLAS requirements.
An international collaboration of 1500 scientists, from 145 institutes in 31 countries, including 250 physicists from 28 US institutions, will construct and use the ATLAS detector.
ATLAS has, in addition to detector coordinators, an education coordinator who, with an ATLAS education task group, intends to develop a significant program integrating research and education.
