Searching for Axionlike Particles with Ultraperipheral Heavy-Ion Collisions

Simon Knapen, Tongyan Lin, Hou Keong Lou, and Tom Melia

Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 171801 – Published 26 April 2017

Abstract

We show that ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can be used to search for axionlike particles with mass below 100 GeV. The $Z^{4}$ enhanced photon-photon luminosity from the ions provides a large exclusive production rate, with a signature of a resonant pair of back-to-back photons and no other activity in the detector. In addition, we present both new and updated limits from recasting multiphoton searches at LEP II and the LHC, which are more stringent than those currently in the literature for the mass range 100 MeV to 100 GeV.

Received 31 August 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.171801

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Hypothetical particle physics models Particle & resonance production Relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Axions

Nuclear PhysicsParticles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

Simon Knapen, Tongyan Lin, Hou Keong Lou, and Tom Melia

Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Theoretical Physics Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA