Are taus the key to discovering SUSY?

The ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC will begin data taking in 2008. Due to the high energy and luminosity of the LHC the ATLAS experiment has a large discovery potential for new physics. One of the most popular ''new physics'' models waiting to be verified is Supersymmetry (SUSY) and so the search for supersymmetric particles will be an important task of 2008. Many SUSY models predict that taus are the most predominantly produced leptons in SUSY channels. However tau data channels are the most difficult to reconstruct and therefore the least studied of all the leptonic channels. We have begun to investigate the potential of unstudied tau data channels for use in SUSY searches, particularly their sensitivity to the SUSY model ''mSUGRA'' in regions of high tan β (regions predicted to be tau dominant). We have also begun to investigate background determination for these channels, in particular the background caused by top decay, which first results show to be the dominant background. Here we present a first look at our findings