Searching for the axion-like particle at the EIC
Yandong Liu (Key Laboratory of Beam Technology of Ministry of Education, College of Nuclear Science and Technology, Beijing Normal University, China, Beijing Radiation Center, China); Bin Yan (Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, Theoretical Division, Group T-2, MS B283, Los Alamos National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, USA)
The axion-like particle (ALP) is a well motivated new particle candidate for beyond the standard model. In this study, we propose to probe the ALP via photon fusion scattering at the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) with electron and proton energies of $ E_e=20\; {\rm GeV} $ and $ E_e=20\; {\rm GeV} $ , respectively. We can constrain the effective coupling strength between the ALP and photons to be $ E_e=20\; {\rm GeV} $ at the $ E_e=20\; {\rm GeV} $ confidence level with an integrated luminosity of $ E_e=20\; {\rm GeV} $ for the mass range $ E_e=20\; {\rm GeV} $ . Such bounds may be significantly improved if we consider the nucleus beam at the EIC. We also demonstrate that the limits from the EIC can be stronger than the off Z-pole measurement at the LEP and light-by-light scattering with pp collisions at the LHC.
