The Top Mass in Hadronic Collisions

I discuss theoretical issues related to the top mass measurements in hadronic collisions.Comment: Contribution to the volume "From My Vast Repertoire - The Legacy of Guido Altarelli. Added in this version: three reference

W+W-, WZ and ZZ production in the POWHEG BOX V2

We present an implementation of the vector boson pair production processes ZZ, W+W- and WZ within the POWHEG BOX V2. This implementation, derived from the POWHEG BOX version, has several improvements over the old one, among which the inclusion of all decay modes of the vector bosons, the possibility to generate different decay modes in the same run, speed optimization and phase space improvements in the handling of interference and singly resonant contributions.Comment: 4 pages, v2 corrects one referenc

A Fixed-Order Calculation of the Heavy-Quark Fragmentation Function in e+e- Collisions

We use a recently completed O(alpha_s^2) fixed-order calculation of the heavy-flavour production cross section in e+e- collisions to compute the heavy-quark fragmentation function. We fit the result of our calculation, convoluted with a Peterson fragmentation function, to available data for charm production, and thus obtain a value for the parameter epsilon in the Peterson function. We discuss the relevance of mass effects and of subleading terms in our calculation.Comment: 7 pages, 2 eps figure

QCD Predictions for Charm and Bottom Production at RHIC

We make up-to-date QCD predictions for open charm and bottom production at RHIC in nucleon-nucleon collisions at \sqrt{S} = 200 GeV. We also calculate the electron spectrum resulting from heavy flavor decays to allow direct comparison to the data. A rigorous benchmark, including the theoretical uncertainties, is established against which nuclear collision data can be compared to obtain evidence for nuclear effects.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure