The ATLAS liquid argon calorimeters: Construction, integration, commissioning and performance from selected beam-test results

The ATLAS liquid argon calorimeter system consists of an electromagnetic barrel calorimeter and two end-caps comprising electromagnetic, hadronic and forward calorimeters.The construction of the full calorimeter system is completed since mid-2004. After construction in the home institutes, the modules have been integrated into wheels, and inserted into their respective cryostats. The readout electronics has also been installed and commissioned. Results of electrical and mechanical quality checks performed during module construction, integration into wheels, cold test of complete calorimeter systems before and after lowering into the ATLAS cavern are reported. Some performance results on response linearity, energy resolution, muon detection and timing resolution, all obtained from the extensive test-beam program done during the construction and integration, are shown. These results confirm that the detector will meet the required physics performance. Since 2006, a continuously increasing fraction of the detector is tested using cosmic muons, and some results obtained from these data are presented.