On the interplay between astrophysical and laboratory probes of MeV-scale axion-like particles

Abstract

Studies of axion-like particles (ALPs) commonly focus on a single type of interaction, for example couplings only to photons. Most ALP models however predict correlations between different couplings, which change the phenomenology in important ways. For example, an MeV-scale ALP coupled to Standard Model gauge bosons at high energies will in general interact with photons, W± and Z bosons as well as mesons and nucleons at low energies. We study the implications of such scenarios and point out that astrophysical constraints, in particular from SN1987A, may be substantially relaxed, open- ing up new regions of parameter space that may be explored with laboratory experiments such as NA62.

Global fits of axion-like particles to XENON1T and astrophysical data

“…Naively, the ALP-electron coupling should be smaller than the ALP-nucleon coupling by a factor m e /m N . However, there are many examples of ALP models where one of the two couplings is strongly suppressed, for example, if the ALP couples dominantly to gluons [137]. We therefore treat the two couplings as completely independent and choose the same prior range for g ae as for g eff aN .…”

Running in the ALPs

“…[38][39][40]. Searches for ALPs produced from the blackbody photons in the solar core [41] and in other astrophysical events [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] have been performed too. ALP searches in flavour experiments have been studied recently in Refs.…”

Invisible decays of axion-like particles: constraints and prospects

“…(2.1) [13]. In the rest of this work we will assume that the couplings to quarks and gluon are either absent, or negligible compared to g aγ and g ae (see for instance [20] for a recent summary of the limits on those couplings). 2 As regards the couplings to the heavier τ and µ leptons, they would yield additional visible decays JHEP06(2021)009 channels which in our analysis are not relevant.…”

“…e.g. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] for recent works on ALPs coupled to photons/leptons). ALPs in this mass range have been invoked for example as a possible solution for both the muon and the electron magnetic moment anomalies [24][25][26][27][28][29][30] and, interestingly, viable solutions to these anomalies require both electromagnetic and leptonic ALP interactions.…”