Heavy QCD Axion in $b\to s$ transition: Enhanced Limits and Projections

Abstract

We study a "heavy" QCD axion whose coupling to the standard model is dominated by $aG\tilde{G}$ but with $m_a\gg m_{\pi }{f}_{\pi }/f_a$. This is well motivated as it can solve the strong CP problem while evading the axion quality problem. It also poses interesting challenges for its experimental search due to its suppressed couplings to photons and leptons. Such axion with mass around a GeV is kinematically inaccessible or poorly constrained by most experimental probes except B-factories. We study $B\to Ka$ transitions as a powerful probe of the heavy QCD axion by performing necessary 2-loop calculations for the first time, together with some improvement on the existing analysis strategy. We find some of the existing limits are enhanced by at least an order of magnitude. We also demonstrate that the bounds are robust against unknown UV physics. For forthcoming data sets of the Belle II experiment, we provide a projection that $f_a$ of a few TeV is within its future reach, which is relevant to the quality problem.

9 pages, 4 figures; Two Typos are corrected; one in equation (B7) and the second in the y-axis scale of Fig. 3. No conclusions and final results changed

References in corpus (14)

• Collider Probes of Axion-Like Particles
• Quark mass relations to four-loop order
• Probing eV-scale axions with CAST
• The Low-Energy Effective Theory of Axions and ALPs
• A New Flavor of Searches for Axion-Like Particles
• Anomalous solutions to the strong CP problem
• Constraining the Axion-Photon Coupling with Massive Stars
• Running in the ALPs
• Search for low mass vector resonances decaying into quark-antiquark pairs in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV
• Consistent treatment of axions in the weak chiral Lagrangian
• Heavy Axion Opportunities at the DUNE Near Detector
• Probing naturally light singlets with a displaced vertex trigger
• Study of $B_c^{+}$ decays to the $K^{+}{K}^{-}{\pi }^{+}$ final state and evidence for the decay $B_c^{+}\to {\chi }_{c0}{\pi }^{+}$
• Measurements of branching fractions and CP asymmetries and studies of angular distributions for B to phi phi K decays

Cited by in corpus (34)

• Flavor probes of axion-like particles
• ALPINIST: Axion-Like Particles In Numerous Interactions Simulated and Tabulated
• Heavy QCD Axion at Belle II: Displaced and Prompt Signals
• Sensitivities to feebly interacting particles: public and unified calculations
• A Theory of Dark Pions
• Axion-like Particle Searches at DarkQuest
• Challenges for heavy QCD axion inflation
• Detecting an axion-like particle with machine learning at the LHC
• Searching for the axion-like particle at the EIC
• High Quality QCD Axion at Gravitational Wave Observatories
• Grand Color Axion
• Search for boosted diphoton resonances in the 10 to 70 GeV mass range using 138 fb${}^{-1}$ of 13 TeV $pp$ collisions with the ATLAS detector
• Phenomenology of axion-like particles with universal fermion couplings -- revisited
• Searching for axion-like particles with data scouting at ATLAS and CMS
• Probing long-lived axions at the KOTO experiment
• Displaced Searches for Light Vector Bosons at Belle II
• Energetic long-lived particles in the CMS muon chambers
• Axion Like Particle Search at Higgs Factories
• Axiogenesis with a Heavy QCD Axion
• Probing a light dark sector at future lepton colliders via invisible decays of the SM-like and dark Higgs bosons
• Advancing the phenomenology of GeV-scale axion-like particles
• Search for photoproduction of axion-like particles at GlueX
• Tera-Zooming in on light (composite) axion-like particles
• ALP-Pions generalized
• Wess-Zumino-Witten Interactions of Axions
• ALPs and HNLs at LHC and Muon Colliders: Uncovering New Couplings and Signals
• Gravitational Signatures of Axion Dark Matter via Parity-Violating Interactions
• $B\to K+\text{axion-like particles}$: effective versus UV-complete models and enhanced two-loop contributions
• New Bounds on Heavy QCD Axions from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
• Constraining axion-gluon coupling in monohadron processes
• Concurrent Exploration of Axion-Like Particle Interactions with Gauge Bosons at the LHC
• New physics particles mixing with mesons: production in the fragmentation chain
• New Physics Searches at Kaon and Hyperon Factories
• ALPs and Heavy Hadron Chiral Perturbation Theory