Searching for axion-like particles with ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper proposes using ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions at the LHC to search for axion-like particles below 100 GeV, leveraging photon-photon interactions to identify potential signals with minimal background.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to search for axion-like particles using heavy-ion collisions and provides updated limits that surpass previous constraints in the 100 MeV to 100 GeV mass range.

Findings

Ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions can produce axion-like particles efficiently.

New limits on axion-like particles are more stringent than previous results.

The signature involves a resonant pair of back-to-back photons with no additional activity.

Abstract

We show that ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions at the LHC can be used to search for axion-like 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 multi-photon 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.