The ATLAS Electron and Photon Triggers

Electron and photon triggers covering transverse energies from 5 GeV to several TeV are essential for signal selection in a wide variety of ATLAS physics analyses to study Standard Model processes and to search for new phenomena. The ATLAS trigger system is divided in a hardware-based Level-1 trigger and a software-based high-level trigger, both of which were upgraded during the LHC shutdown in preparation for Run 2 operation. To cope with the increasing luminosity and more challenging pile-up conditions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, the trigger selections at each level are optimised to control the rates and keep efficiencies high. To achieve this goal multivariate analysis techniques are used. The ATLAS electron and photon triggers and their performance with Run 2 data are presented. (paper)