Geneva, 9 May 2016. ATLAS is back and better than ever! With 13 TeV beams circulating in the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS experiment is now recording data for physics. This milestone marks the start of the second year of “Run 2” as ATLAS continues its exploration of 13 TeV energy frontier.

Anticipation is high for 2016, with the year set to deliver exciting new results for physicists around the world. From precision studies of the Higgs boson to searches for new particles, this year’s data will deepen our understanding of Nature. "We welcome the first 13 TeV collisions of the year with the careful preparation and great expectations of a good friend's anticipated encounter,” says Alessandro Cerri, ATLAS Run Co-Coordinator. “Together, we are ready for new, exciting explorations!"

Today’s smooth start was thanks to the hard work and dedication of countless ATLAS teams. ATLAS physicists were able to hit the ground running, harnessing last year’s experience running at 13 TeV. “The ATLAS teams have done an incredible job to further improve the performance of the detector and get the systems up and running again in step with the swift start-up of LHC in 2016," says Alex Oh, ATLAS Run Co-Coordinator. "It’s going to be an exiting year for ATLAS and the other LHC experiments with hopefully great discoveries to be made."

“The mission of the data preparation team is to get the best quality data to the physics analysis teams as quickly as possible. We’ve learned from our experience in 2015 and this year we will be faster, with even better data quality,” adds Paul Laycock, ATLAS Data Preparation Coordinator.

Over the next 6 months of operation with proton beams, the ATLAS experiment will see up to a billion collisions per second. Selecting the most interesting of these collisions is the ATLAS trigger: "It is with great excitement and satisfaction we see the ATLAS trigger system smoothly selecting events for analysis; the many months of preparation and the long nights our experts spent at the control room certainly paid off!” says Anna Sfyrla, ATLAS Trigger Coordinator. “We now need to be patient for more LHC data to come and look into them for the next surprises Nature holds for us."

“2015 was like watching the film trailer, there were tantalising glimpses of something amazing happening,” concludes Paul Laycock. “In 2016 we're looking forward to watching the whole film!”

For more information, check out the ATLAS Run 2 Resource page.