The aim of the proposed CERN Gamma Factory is to produce ∼1017 photons per second with energies up to 400 MeV. The photon beam intensity is expected to be a factor of O(107) larger than that of the presently available photon beams in the MeV energy range. In this work, we explore its potential to probe physics beyond the Standard Model. In particular, we discuss searches for axion like particles (ALPs) with dominant couplings to photons and consider various production scenarios - fixed target, photon-photon collision, and conversion by a magnetic field and detection schemes - via decay to photons or back-conversion. We find that the Gamma Factory in a fixed target mode can probe ALPs with mass ma≲O(100MeV) and decay constants larger than 107 GeV, improving by an order of magnitude the discovery potential of previous beam dump experiments.
@article{arxiv.2105.15072,
title = {Probing ALPs at the CERN Gamma Factory},
author = {Reuven Balkin and Mieczyslaw W. Krasny and Teng Ma and Benjamin R. Safdi and Yotam Soreq},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.15072},
year = {2021}
}