Performance of the ATLAS Tau Trigger system with 7 TeV pp collisions at the LHC

The LHC resumed operation in February 2011, colliding proton beams at a center of mass energy of 7 TeV. The first challenge consisted of understanding the detector performance with increasing luminosity. In particular, the ATLAS tau trigger system needed to be adapted, taking into account experience from 2010. The hadronic tau trigger is a key element in the discovery of new physics, where tau lepton final states play a crucial role. It allows efficient collection of the physics signal, while keeping the overall rate within the acceptable bandwidth. This contribution summarizes the status of the tau trigger system at different stages of data taking, emphasizing the key elements of the online selection and their performance. Distributions obtained from Monte Carlo simulated samples are compared to a di-jet selection from data. Different methods to obtain trigger efficiencies from data are shown and the results from 2010 and 2011 physics analyses are presented.