Cold feet

Individuals often lose confidence in their prospects as they approach the `moment of truth.' An axiomatic model of such individuals is provided. The model adapts and extends (by relaxing the Independence axiom) Gul and Pesendorfer's model of temptation and self-control to capture an individual who changes her beliefs so as to become more pessimistic as payoff time approaches. In a variation of the model, the individual becomes more optimistic at an ex post stage in order to feel better about her available options.Pessimism, optimism, cold feet, temptation, self-control, moment of truth, temporal proximity, confidence

An axiomatic model of 'cold feet'

Individuals often lose confidence in their prospects as they approach the "moment of truth." An axiomatic model of such individuals is provided. The model adapts and extends (by relaxing the Independence axiom) Gul and Pesendorfer's model of temptation and self-control to capture an individual who changes her beliefs so as to become more pessimistic as payoff time approaches. In a variation of the model, the individual becomes more optimistic at an ex post stage in order to feel better about her available options.pessimism, optimism, cold feet, temptation, self-control, moment of truth, temporal proximity, confidence

Femtoscopy of Pb-Pb and pp collisions at the LHC with the ALICE experiment

We report on the results of femtoscopic analysis of Pb-Pb collisions at sqrt(s_NN)=2.76 TeV and pp collisions at sqrt(s)=0.9, 2.76 and 7 TeV with identical pions and kaons. Detailed femtoscopy studies in heavy-ion collisions at SPS and RHIC have shown that emission region sizes ("HBT radii") decrease with increasing pair transverse momentum k_T, which is understood as a manifestation of the collective behavior of matter. The trend was predicted to persist at the LHC. The data from Pb-Pb collisions confirm the existence of a flowing medium and provide strict constraints on the dynamical models. Similar analysis is carried out for pp collisions for pions and kaons and qualitative similarities to heavy-ion data are seen, especially in collisions producing large number of particles. The observed trends give insight into the soft particle production mechanism in pp collisions. 3D radii were also found to universally scale with event multiplicity in heavy-ion collisions. We extend the range of multiplicities both upwards with the Pb-Pb data and downwards with the pp data to test the scaling in new areas. In particular the high multiplicity pp collisions reach particle densities comparable to the ones measured in peripheral Cu-Cu and Au-Au collisions at RHIC. This allows for the first time to directly compare freeze-out sizes for systems with very different initial states.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings of the Quark Matter 2011 plenary tal

Femtoscopy in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions: Two Decades of Progress

Analyses of two-particle correlations have provided the chief means for determining spatio-temporal characteristics of relativistic heavy ion collisions. We discuss the theoretical formalism behind these studies and the experimental methods used in carrying them out. Recent results from RHIC are put into context in a systematic review of correlation measurements performed over the past two decades. The current understanding of these results is discussed in terms of model comparisons and overall trends.Comment: 49 pages, 16 figures; to appear in Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science; final version includes minor updates in text, a few references added, and two figures updated; Figures and numerical data tables available at http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~lisa/FemtoscopyReview2005

Evidence for Hydrodynamic Evolution in Proton-Proton Scattering at LHC Energies

In $pp$ scattering at LHC energies, large numbers of elementary scatterings will contribute significantly, and the corresponding high multiplicity events will be of particular interest. Elementary scatterings are parton ladders, identified with color flux-tubes. In high multiplicity events, many of these flux tubes are produced in the same space region, creating high energy densities. We argue that there are good reasons to employ the successful procedure used for heavy ion collisions: matter is assumed to thermalizes quickly, such that the energy from the flux-tubes can be taken as initial condition for a hydrodynamic expansion. This scenario gets spectacular support from very recent results on Bose-Einstein correlations in $pp$ scattering at 900 GeV at LHC.Comment: 11 pages, 20 figure

Use of cumulants to quantify uncertainties in the HBT measurements of the homogeneity regions

Let us denote p(x|K) the space density of the points where identical particles of some kind, e.g. pi+ mesons, with momentum K are produced. When using the HBT method to determine p(x|K) one encounters ambiguities. We show that these ambiguities do not affect the even cumulants of the distribution p(x|K). In particular, the HBT radii of the homogeneity regions, which are given by the second order cumulants, and the distribution of distances between the pairs of production points for particles with momentum K can be reliably measured. The odd cumulants are ambiguous. The are, however, correlated. In particular, when the average position (K) is known as a function of K there is no further ambiguity.Comment: LateX, 10 pages, no figure