Proposal to use laser-accelerated electrons to probe the axion-electron coupling
Abstract
The axion is a hypothetical particle associated with a possible solution to the strong CP problem and is a leading candidate for dark matter. In this paper we investigate the emission of axions by accelerated electrons. We find the emission probability and energy within the WKB approximation for an electron accelerated by an electromagnetic field. As an application, we estimate the number of axions produced by electrons accelerated using two counter-propagating high-intensity lasers and discuss how they would be converted to photons to be detected. We find that, under realistic experimental conditions, competitive model-independent bounds on the coupling between the axion and the electron could be achieved in such an experiment.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.20625,
title = {Proposal to use laser-accelerated electrons to probe the axion-electron coupling},
author = {Georgios Vacalis and Atsushi Higuchi and Robert Bingham and Gianluca Gregori},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.20625},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
20 pages, 3 figures, v2 matches the published version