Simulation of Pile-up in the ATLAS Experiment

The high luminosity of the LHC results in a significant background to interesting physics events known as pile-up. ATLAS has adopted two independent methods for modeling pile-up and its effect on analyses. The first is a bottom-up approach, using a detailed simulation of the detector to recreate each component of the pile-up background. The second uses specially recorded data events to emulate it. This article reports on the experience using both of these methods, including performance considerations, for simulating pile-up in ATLAS.