The Electron-Ion Collider~(EIC), a forthcoming powerful high-luminosity facility, represents an exciting opportunity to explore new physics. In this article, we study the potential of the EIC to probe the coupling between axion-like particles~(ALPs) and photons in coherent scattering. The ALPs can be produced via photon fusion and decay back to two photons inside the EIC detector. In a prompt-decay search, we find that the EIC can set the most stringent bound for ma≲20\GeV and probe the effective scales Λ≲105GeV. In a displaced-vertex search, which requires adopting an EM calorimeter technology that provides directionality, the EIC could probe ALPs with ma≲1\GeV at effective scales Λ≲107\GeV. Combining the two search strategies, the EIC can probe a significant portion of unexplored parameter space in the 0.2<ma<20\GeV mass range.
@article{arxiv.2310.08827,
title = {Probing axion-like particles at the Electron-Ion Collider},
author = {Reuven Balkin and Or Hen and Wenliang Li and Hongkai Liu and Teng Ma and Yotam Soreq and Mike Williams},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.08827},
year = {2024}
}