Peer Pressure, Incentives, and Gender: an Experimental Analysis of Motivation in the Workplace

We present results from a real-effort experiment, simulating actual work-place conditions, comparing the productivity of workers under fixed wages and piece rates. Workers, who were paid to enter data, were exposed to different degrees of peer pressure under both payment systems. The peer pressure was generated in the form of private information about the productivity of their peers. We have two main results. First, we find no level of peer pressure for which the productivity of either male or female workers is significantly higher than productivity without peer pressure. Second, we find that very low and very high levels of peer pressure can significantly decrease productivity (particularly for men paid fixed wages). These results are consistent with models of conformism and self-motivation.Peer effects, fixed wages, piece rates, gender

Improved Nonrelativistic QCD for Heavy Quark Physics

We construct an improved version of nonrelativistic QCD for use in lattice simulations of heavy quark physics, with the goal of reducing systematic errors from all sources to below 10\%. We develop power counting rules to assess the importance of the various operators in the action and compute all leading order corrections required by relativity and finite lattice spacing. We discuss radiative corrections to tree level coupling constants, presenting a procedure that effectively resums the largest such corrections to all orders in perturbation theory. Finally, we comment on the size of nonperturbative contributions to the coupling constants.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figures (not included), in LaTe

Invariant Operators in Collinear Effective Theory

We consider processes which produce final state hadrons whose energy is much greater than their mass. In this limit interactions involving collinear fermions and gluons are constrained by a symmetry, and we give a general set of rules for constructing leading and subleading invariant operators. Wilson coefficients C(mu,P) are functions of a label operator P, and do not commute with collinear fields. The symmetry is used to reproduce a two-loop result for factorization in B -> D pi in a simple way.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figs, journal versio

Power corrections in e+ e- --> pi+ pi-, K+ K- and B --> K pi, pi pi

CLEO-c measurements of the timelike form factors F_pi, F_K at \sqrt{s}=3.671 GeV provide a direct probe of power corrections (PC's) at energies near m_B. PC's in F_pi, F_K and B \to K pi, pi pi are separated into perturbative and soft parts. In F_pi, F_K the latter are \ge O(10) larger. A PC fit to the B \to K pi, pi pi data also yields a \ge O(10) soft-to-perturbative hierarchy for the QCD penguin PC's. Hence, both can be attributed to dominance of the soft-ovelap between energetic (approximately) back-to-back collinear partons, and consistency of the B\to K pi, pi pi fit with the Standard Model appears to be naturally realized. The CP asymmetries S_{K_s pi^0}, C_{K_s pi^0} are well determined, providing a clean test for new physics.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, version published in Eur. Phys. J. C; elaborated on the connection between power corrections in e+e- ->M1 M2 and the B-> M1 M2 QCD penguin amplitudes; removed speculation that soft-overlaps are much larger for PP than for VP and VV final states, this is not supported by a new analysis in preparatio

Nonleptonic B decays into two light mesons in soft-collinear effective theory

We consider nonleptonic B decays into two light mesons at leading order in soft-collinear effective theory, and show that the decay amplitudes are factorized to all orders in alpha_s. The operators for nonleptonic B decays in the full theory are first matched to the operators in SCET_I, which is the effective theory appropriate for sqrt{m_b Lambda} <mu <m_b with Lambda~0.5 GeV. We evolve the operators and the relevant time-ordered products in SCET_I to SCET_II, which is appropriate for mu < sqrt{m_b Lambda}. Using the gauge-invariant operators in SCET_II, we compute nonleptonic B decays in SCET, including the nonfactorizable spectator contributions and spectator contributions to the heavy-to-light form factor. As an application, we present the decay amplitudes for B ->pi,pi in soft-collinear effective theory.Comment: 42 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables Major revision of the manuscript. The idea of using SCET_I, and SCET_II is clearly presented. Some of the calculational steps are explicitly show

Quantum Newtonian Dynamics on a Light Front

We recall the special features of quantum dynamics on a light-front (in an infinite momentum frame) in string and field theory. The reason this approach is more effective for string than for fields is stressed: the light-front dynamics for string is that of a true Newtonian many particle system, since a string bit has a fixed Newtonian mass. In contrast, each particle of a field theory has a variable Newtonian mass P^+, so the Newtonian analogy actually requires an infinite number of species of elementary Newtonian particles. This complication substantially weakens the value of the Newtonian analogy in applying light-front dynamics to nonperturbative problems. Motivated by the fact that conventional field theories can be obtained as infinite tension limits of string theories, we propose a way to recast field theory as a standard Newtonian system. We devise and analyze some simple quantum mechanical systems that display the essence of the proposal, and we discuss prospects for applying these ideas to large N_c QCD.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, LaTex, psfig, references added, APS copyrigh

Status of heavy quark physics from the lattice

In this short review, I present a summary of various methods used to simulate heavy quarks on the lattice. I mainly focus on effectives theories, and give some physical results.Comment: Talk given at QCD06, Montpellier July 06, 6 pages, 2 figures, espcrc2.st

Symmetry-breaking corrections to heavy-to-light B meson form factors at large recoil

Recently it has been shown that symmetries emerging in the heavy quark and large recoil energy limit impose various relations on form factors that parametrise the decay of B mesons into light mesons. These symmetries are broken by perturbative effects. In this paper we discuss the structure of heavy-to-light form factors including such effects and compute symmetry-breaking corrections to first order in the strong coupling. As an application of our results we consider the forward-backward asymmetry zero in the rare decay B -> V l^+ l^- and the possibility to constrain potential new physics contributions to the Wilson coefficient C_9.Comment: 30 pages, LaTeX (typos in eq. (44), (46) corrected