The LHC as an Axion-Photon Collider

Abstract

Assuming the existence of an axion-like particle (ALP), beams of relativistic particles emit fluxes of quasi-real ALPs, analogous to the photon fluxes described by Weizsäcker-Williams-type approximations. Consequently, ALP-ALP and ALP-photon collisions can occur at the LHC. We initiate the study of the LHC as an ALP collider, and show that ALP collisions provide competitive probes of certain ALP couplings. We show that ALP fluxes from heavy ions are suppressed relative to those from protons, unlike their photon counterpart. As a result, the most likely processes are ALP-photon collisions occurring in the proton-ion ($p$A) ultraperipheral collisions. Using our implementation of ALP fluxes in simulation tools, we show that ALP-photon collisions in $p$Pb efficiently probe ALP couplings to third generation fermions. LHC data with realistic $p$Pb luminosity can constrain the product of ALP couplings to nucleons and top quarks at the level of $O(0.01$ TeV${}^{-1})$. Notably, ALP-photon collisions naturally provide the leading probe of ALP flavor-violating couplings to the top quark. We suggest that the 2016 $p$Pb dataset collected at CMS, ATLAS, and LHCb should be explored for evidence of such collisions.

6 pages, 2 figures. v2: text slightly expanded, matches PRL version

References in corpus (45)

• The automated computation of tree-level and next-to-leading order differential cross sections, and their matching to parton shower simulations
• Axion Cosmology
• String Axiverse
• Axions In String Theory
• The Physics of Ultraperipheral Collisions at the LHC
• Collider Probes of Axion-Like Particles
• The QCD Axion and Moduli Stabilisation
• New Exclusion Limits on Dark Gauge Forces from Proton Bremsstrahlung in Beam-Dump Data
• ALPs Effective Field Theory and Collider Signatures
• Searching for axion-like particles with ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions
• Evidence for light-by-light scattering and searches for axion-like particles in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Observing light-by-light scattering at the Large Hadron Collider
• Flavor probes of axion-like particles
• Search for B --> K(*) nu nubar and invisible quarkonium decays
• Axion-Like Particles at Future Colliders
• Quark Flavor Phenomenology of the QCD Axion
• Measurement of the very rare $K^{+}\to {\pi }^{+}\nu \bar{\nu }$ decay
• Photonuclear and Two-photon Interactions at High-Energy Nuclear Colliders
• Invisible Axions and Large-Radius Compactifications
• Search for Axion-Like Particles produced in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collisions at Belle II
• A QCD Axion from Higher Dimensional Gauge Field
• Validity of the Weizsäcker-Williams Approximation and the Analysis of Beam Dump Experiments: Production of an axion, a dark photon, or a new axial-vector boson
• Measurement of light-by-light scattering and search for axion-like particles with 2.2 nb${}^{-1}$ of Pb+Pb data with the ATLAS detector
• Searching for axion-like particles with proton tagging at the LHC
• Phenomenology of GeV-scale scalar portal
• A new approach to modelling elastic and inelastic photon-initiated production at the LHC: SuperChic 4
• gamma-UPC: Automated generation of exclusive photon-photon processes in ultraperipheral proton and nuclear collisions with varying form factors
• Measurement of exclusive ${\rm Y}$ photoproduction from protons in pPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=$ 5.02 TeV
• Long Range Forces from Pseudoscalar Exchange
• Measurement of the top-quark mass in $t\bar{t}+1$-jet events collected with the ATLAS detector in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV
• Search for vector-like T quarks decaying to top quarks and Higgs bosons in the all-hadronic channel using jet substructure
• Dark Sector Production via Proton Bremsstrahlung
• A Holographic Perspective on the Axion Quality Problem
• Central ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ production via photon-photon fusion in proton-proton collisions with proton dissociation
• Measurement of charged particle spectra in minimum-bias events from proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV
• Measurement of the differential $\mathrm{t}\bar{\mathrm{t}}$ production cross section as a function of the jet mass and extraction of the top quark mass in hadronic decays of boosted top quarks
• Measurement of forward top pair production in the dilepton channel in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV
• Search for an axion-like particle with forward proton scattering in association with photon pairs at ATLAS
• Investigation of the concurrent effects of ALP-photon and ALP-electron couplings in Collider and Beam Dump Searches
• Wake forces in a background of quadratically coupled mediators
• Quark flavor violation and axion-like particles from top-quark decays at the LHC
• Search for short- and long-lived axion-like particles in $H\to aa\to 4\gamma$ decays with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC
• Background-Induced Forces from Dark Relics
• Search for high-mass exclusive diphoton production with tagged protons in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV
• Measurement of differential $b\bar{b}$- and $c\bar{c}$-dijet cross-sections in the forward region of $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13\mathrm{TeV}$

Cited by in corpus (1)

• A global analysis of ALP-mediated multiboson production at the LHC