Photon-jet as a probe of axion-like particles at the LHC

Daohan Wang, Lei Wu, Jin Min Yang, Mengchao Zhang

Published 2021-02-02Version 1

Axion-like particles (ALPs) are predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model (SM). When ALP mass lies in the range of MeV to GeV, the cosmology and astrophysics will be largely irrelevant. In this work, we investigate such light ALPs through the ALP-strahlung process $pp \to V a (\to \gamma\gamma)$ at the LHC. With the photon-jet algorithm, we demonstrate that our approach can extend the LHC sensitivity and improve the existing limits on ALP-photon coulping in the ALP mass range from 0.3 GeV to 10 GeV at the 14 TeV LHC with an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb$^{-1}$.