Extending the constraint for axion-like particles as resonances at the LHC and laser beam experiments

Understand

We study the discovery potential of axion-like particles (ALP), pseudo-scalars weakly coupled to Standard Model fields, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

• Our focus is on ALPs coupled to the electromagnetic field, which would induce anomalous scattering of light-by-light.
• This can be directly probed in central exclusive production of photon pairs in ultra-peripheral collisions at the LHC in proton and heavy ion collisions.
• We consider non-standard collision modes of the LHC, such as argon-argon collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7$ TeV and proton-lead collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 8.16$ TeV to access regions in the parameter space complementary to the ones previously considered for lead-lead or proton-proton collisions.