Abstract: The silhouette of a black hole having a critical curve (an unstable bound photon orbit) when illuminated by an optically thin accretion disk whose emission is confined to the equatorial plane shows a distinctive central brightness depression (the shadow) whose outer edge consists of a series of strongly lensed, selfsimilar rings superimposed with the disk???s direct emission. While the size and shape of the critical curve depend only on the background geometry, the pattern of bright and dark regions (including the size and depth of the shadow itself) in the image is strongly influenced by the (astro)physics of the accretion disk. This aspect makes it difficult to extract clean and clear observational discriminators between the Kerr black hole and other compact objects. In the presence of a second critical curve, however, observational differences become apparent. In this work we shall consider some spherically symmetric black hole and wormhole geometries characterized by the presence of a second critical curve, via a uniparametric family of extensions of the Schwarzschild metric. By assuming three toy models of geometrically thin accretion disks, we show the presence of additional light rings in the intermediate region between the two critical curves. The observation of such rings could represent a compelling evidence for the existence of black hole mimickers having multiple critical curves.

Abstract: A search is made for a vectorlike T quark decaying into a Higgs boson and a top quark in 13 TeV protonproton collisions using the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider with a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb???1. The Higgs-boson and top-quark candidates are identified in the all-hadronic decay mode, where H – bb ?? and t – bW – bqq??0 are reconstructed as large-radius jets. The candidate Higgs boson, top quark, and associated B hadrons are identified using tagging algorithms. No significant excess is observed above the background, so limits are set on the production cross section of a singlet T quark at 95% confidence level, depending on the mass mT and coupling ??T of the vectorlike T quark to Standard Model particles. In the considered mass range between 1.0 and 2.3 TeV, the upper limit on the allowed coupling values increases with mT from a minimum value of 0.35 for 1.07 < mT < 1.4 TeV to 1.6 for mT 1/4 2.3 TeV.

Abstract: We study a Born-Infeld inspired model of gravity and electromagnetism in which both types of fields are treated on an equal footing via a determinantal approach in a metric-aft me formulation. Though this formulation is a priori in conflict with the postulates of metric theories of gravity, we find that the resulting equations can also be obtained from an action combining the Einstein-Hilbert action with a minimally coupled nonlinear electrodynamics. As an example, the dynamics is solved for the charged static black hole.

Abstract: The outflows from neutrino-cooled black hole accretion disks formed in neutron-star mergers or cores of collapsing stars are expected to be neutron-rich enough to explain a large fraction of elements created by the rapid neutron-capture process, but their precise chemical composition remains elusive. Here, we investigate the role of fast neutrino flavor conversion, motivated by the findings of our post-processing analysis that shows evidence of electron-neutrino lepton-number crossings deep inside the disk, hence suggesting possibly nontrivial effects due to neutrino flavor mixing. We implement a parametric, dynamically self-consistent treatment of fast conversion in time-dependent simulations and examine the impact on the disk and its outflows. By activating the otherwise inefficient, emission of heavy-lepton neutrinos, fast conversions enhance the disk cooling rates and reduce the absorption rates of electron-type neutrinos, causing a reduction of the electron fraction in the disk by 0.03-0.06 and in the ejected material by 0.01-0.03. The rapid neutron-capture process yields are enhanced by typically no more than a factor of two, rendering the overall impact of fast conversions modest. The kilonova is prolonged as a net result of increased lanthanide opacities and enhanced radioactive heating rates. We observe only mild sensitivity to the disk mass, the condition for the onset of flavor conversion, and to the considered cases of flavor mixing. Remarkably, parametric models of flavor mixing that conserve the lepton numbers per family result in an overall smaller impact than models invoking three-flavor equipartition, often assumed in previous works.

Abstract: We study the interaction of the doubly bottom systems BB, B*B, BsB, B-s*B, B*B*, B*B-S, B*B-s*, BsBs, BsBs*, B-s*B-s* by means of vector meson exchange with Lagrangians from an extension of the local hidden gauge approach. The full s-wave scattering matrix is obtained implementing unitarity in coupled channels by means of the Bethe-Salpeter equation. We find poles below the channel thresholds for the attractively interacting channels B*B in I = 0, B-s*B – B*B-s in I = 1/2, B* B* in I = 0, and B-s*B* in I = 1/2, all of them with J(P) = 1(+). For these cases the widths are evaluated identifying the dominant source of imaginary part. We find binding energies of the order of 10-20 MeV, and the widths vary much from one system to the other: of the order of 10-100 eV for the B* B system and B-s*B – B* B-s, about 6 MeV for the B*B* system and of the order of 0.5 MeV for the B-s*B* system.