Abstract:

The successful operation of the LHC over the past 6 months has enabled the ATLAS detector to collect almost 3 pb^{-1} of collision data. About a third of them has been already analyzed and results are being made public. Electromagnetic signatures are of particular importance since they constitute a large fraction of the final states of a number of physical processes already observed in the collected data. A brief overview of the reconstruction of electrons and photons in ATLAS will be given. It will then be followed by the most recent results of the measured electron and photon reconstruction performance. Several physics processes involving electrons and photons in their final state will also be reviewed. Finally an outlook of the work and plans foreseen for the near future will be presented.