Early Top Physics with ATLAS

Abstract

The ATLAS detector is one of the two multi-purpose experiments located at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and is expected to collect first collision data in summer 2009. Due to the large top-quark production cross-section the LHC will function as a top-quark factory allowing to measure top-quark properties even at initial luminosities. We present some recently-performed studies, focussing on measurements of the top pair and single top production cross-sections with the first fb-1 of data. The potential for the measurement of other top-quark properties like the mass will be also briefly discussed.