arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Nicolas Borghini.
Using a generating-function formalism, we compute the contribution of momentum conservation to multiparticle correlations between the emitted particles in high-energy collisions. In particular, we derive a compact expression of the genuine M-particle correlation, for arbitrary M.
The restrictions imposed by anomaly cancellation on the chiral fermion content of nonsupersymmetric gauge theories based on various groups are studied in spacetime dimension D=6, 8, and 10. In particular, we show that the only mathematically consistent chiral SU(5) theory in D=6 contains three nonidentical generations.
We discuss signatures of thermalisation in heavy ion collisions based on elliptic flow. We then propose a new method to analyse elliptic flow, based on multiparticle azimuthal correlations. This method allows one to test quantitatively the collective behaviour of the interacting system.
We have recently proposed a new method of flow analysis, based on a cumulant expansion of multiparticle azimuthal correlations. Here, we describe the practical implementation of the method. The major improvement over traditional methods is that the cumulant expansion eliminates order by order correlations not due to flow, which are often large but usually neglected.
We present a new method for analyzing directed and elliptic flow in heavy ion collisions. Unlike standard methods, it separates the contribution of flow to azimuthal correlations from contributions due to other effects. The separation relies on a cumulant expansion of multiparticle azimuthal correlations, and includes corrections for detector inefficiencies. This new method allows the measurement of the flow of identified particles in narrow phase-space regions, and can be used in every regime, from intermediate to ultrarelativistic energies.
The methods currently used to measure azimuthal distributions of particles in heavy ion collisions assume that all azimuthal correlations between particles result from their correlation with the reaction plane. However, other correlations exist, and it is safe to neglect them only if azimuthal anisotropies are much larger than 1/sqrt(N), with N the total number of particles emitted in the collision. This condition is not satisfied at ultrarelativistic energies. We propose a new method, based on a cumulant expansion of multiparticle azimuthal correlations, which allows to measure much smaller values of azimuthal anisotropies, down to 1/N. It is simple to implement and can be used to measure both integrated and differential flow. Furthermore, this method automatically eliminates the major systematic errors, which are due to azimuthal asymmetries in the detector acceptance.
The measurement of azimuthal distributions in nucleus-nucleus collisions relies upon the assumption that azimuthal correlations between particles result solely from their correlation with the reaction plane (i.e. flow). We show that at SPS energies, the ansatz is no longer valid, and two-particle correlations due to momentum conservation, final state interactions or resonance decays become of the same order as those arising from flow. This leads us to introduce new methods to analyse collective flow, based on a cumulant expansion, which enable to extract smaller values than those accessible to the standard analysis.
Several heavy ion experiments at SPS have measured azimuthal distributions of particles with respect to the reaction plane. These distributions are deduced from two-particle azimuthal correlations under the assumption that they result solely from correlations with the reaction plane. In this paper, we investigate other sources of azimuthal correlations: transverse momentum conservation, which produces back-to-back correlations, resonance decays, HBT correlations and final state interactions. These correlations increase with impact parameter: most of them vary with the multiplicity N like 1/N. When they are taken into account, the experimental results of the NA49 collaboration at SPS are significantly modified. These correlations might also explain an important fraction of the pion directed flow observed by WA98. Data should be reanalyzed taking into account carefully these non--flow correlations.
The methods currently used to measure collective flow in nucleus--nucleus collisions assume that the only azimuthal correlations between particles are those arising from their correlation with the reaction plane. However, quantum HBT correlations also produce short range azimuthal correlations between identical particles. This creates apparent azimuthal anisotropies of a few percent when pions are used to estimate the direction of the reaction plane. These should not be misinterpreted as originating from collective flow. In particular, we show that the peculiar behaviour of the directed and elliptic flow of pions observed by NA49 at low p_T can be entirely understood in terms of HBT correlations. Such correlations also produce apparent higher Fourier harmonics (of order n larger than 3) of the azimuthal distribution, with magnitudes of the order of 1%, which should be looked for in the data.