Hard-photon production at and 172 GeV at LEP

We have studied the process e+e− → nγ (n ≥ 2) at centre-of-mass energies of 161.3 GeV and 172.1 GeV. The analysis is based on a sample of events collected by the L3 detector in 1996 corresponding to total integrated luminosities of 10.7 pb−1 and 10.1 pb−1 respectively. The observed rates of events with two and more photons and the characteristic distributions are in good agreement with the Standard Model expectations. This is used to set lower limits on contact interaction energy scale parameters, on the QED cut-off parameters and on the mass of excited electrons.