Searching for the axion-like particle at the EIC

TL;DR

This paper proposes using the Electron-Ion Collider to search for axion-like particles via photon fusion, setting new constraints on their coupling strength and surpassing some existing experimental limits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to probe ALPs at the EIC through photon fusion scattering, providing competitive bounds on ALP-photon coupling.

Findings

EIC can constrain ALP-photon coupling to 0.2 TeV^{-1} at 2σ for masses 5-40 GeV.

Bounds from EIC are stronger than LEP off Z-pole measurements.

EIC constraints surpass LHC Light-by-Light scattering limits.

Abstract

The axion-like particle (ALP) is a well motivated new particle candidate of beyond the Standard Model. In this work, we propose to probe the ALP through the photon fusion scattering at the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) with electron and proton energy $E_e=20~{\rm GeV}$ and $E_p=250~{\rm GeV}$. It shows that we could constrain the effective coupling strength between ALP and photons to be $0.2~{\rm TeV}^{-1}$ at $2\sigma$ confidence level with the integrated luminosity of $300~{\rm fb}^{-1}$ for the mass range $m_a\in [5,40]~{\rm GeV}$. Such bound could be much improved if we consider the nucleus beam at the EIC. We also demonstrate that the limits from the EIC could be stronger than the off $Z$-pole measurement at the LEP and the Light-by-Light scattering with pp collision at the LHC.