Abstract: In this paper we consider the diphoton production in hadronic collisions at the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD, taking into account for the first time the full top quark mass dependence up to two loops (full NNLO). We show selected numerical distributions, highlighting the kinematic regions where the massive corrections are more significant. We make use of the recently computed two-loop massive amplitudes for diphoton production in the quark annihilation channel. The remaining massive contributions at NNLO are also considered, and we comment on the weight of the different types of contributions to the full and complete result.

Abstract: The shape of the electron spectrum emitted in /3 decay carries a wealth of information about nuclear structure and fundamental physics. In spite of that, few dedicated measurements have been made of /3 -spectrum shapes. In this work we present a newly developed detector for /3 electrons based on a telescope concept. A thick plastic scintillator is employed in coincidence with a thin silicon detector. The first measurements employing this detector have been carried out with mono -energetic electrons from the high-energy resolution electron -beam spectrometer at Bordeaux. Here we report on the good reproduction of the experimental spectra of mono -energetic electrons using Monte Carlo simulations. This is a crucial step for future experiments, where a detailed Monte Carlo characterization of the detector is needed to determine the shape of the /3 -electron spectra by deconvolution of the measured spectra with the response function of the detector. A chamber to contain two telescope assemblies has been designed for future /3 -decay experiments at the Ion Guide Isotope Separator On -Line facility in Jyvaskyla, aimed at improving our understanding of reactor antineutrino spectra.

Abstract: The optical appearance of a body compact enough to feature an unstable bound orbit, when surrounded by an accretion disk, is expected to be dominated by a luminous ring of radiation enclosing a central brightness depression typically known as the shadow. Despite observational limitations, the rough details of this picture have been now confirmed by the results of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration on the imaging of the M87 and Milky Way supermassive central objects. However, the precise characterization of both features-ring and shadow-depends on the interaction between the background geometry and the accretion disk, thus being a fertile playground to test our theories on the nature of compact objects and the gravitational field itself in the strong-field regime. In this work we use both features in order to test a continuous family of solutions interpolating between regular black holes and horizonless compact objects, which arise within the Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld theory of gravity, a viable extension of Einstein's general relativity (GR). To this end we consider seven distinctive classes of such configurations (five black holes and two traversable wormholes) and study their optical appearances under illumination by a geometrically and optically thin accretion disk, emitting monochromatically with three analytic intensity profiles previously suggested in the literature. We build such images and consider the sub-ring structure created by light rays crossing the disk more than once and existing on top of the main ring of radiation. We discuss in detail the modifications as compared to their GR counterparts, the Lyapunov exponents of unstable nearly-bound orbits, as well as the differences between black hole and traversable wormholes for the three intensity profiles. In addition we use the claim by the EHT Collaboration on the radius of the bright ring acting (under proper calibrations) as a proxy for the radius of the shadow itself to explore the parameter space of our solutions compatible with such a result.