This article presents short overwiew of the physics programme which should be possible with the ATLAS detector, as documented in ATLAS Detector and Physics Performance Technical Design Report. The physics potential studied in previous documents (ATLAS Letter of Intent and ATLAS Technical Proposal) have been re-examined and many new strategies proposed. Here search for the Higgs boson is discussed in somewhat more details, while only highlights of the new results are given for each of the other important aspects in this very broad physics programme.

PACS numbers: 12.15.--y, 12.60.Fr, 12.60.Jv