  This paper presents a new method of reconstructing the individual charged and
neutral hadrons in tau decays with the ATLAS detector. The reconstructed
hadrons are used to classify the decay mode and to calculate the visible
four-momentum of reconstructed tau candidates, significantly improving the
resolution with respect to the calibration in the existing tau reconstruction.
The performance of the reconstruction algorithm is optimised and evaluated
using simulation and validated using samples of $Z\to\tau\tau$ and
$Z(\to\mu\mu)$+jets events selected from proton-proton collisions at a
centre-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV, corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of 5 fb$^{-1}$.
