Looking for new strategies to probe low mass axion-like particles in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions at the LHC

Abstract

The possibility of searching for long-lived axion-like particles (ALPs) decaying into photons is investigated in ultraperipheral $PbPb$ collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We propose a search strategy for low mass ALPs using the LHCb and ALICE experiments. The ALP identification is performed by requiring the decay vertex be reconstructed outside the region where a primary vertex is expected, which strongly suppress the contribution associated with the decay of light mesons. We also use the fact that a fraction of the photons convert into electron-positron pairs, allowing the reconstruction of the particle decay position. We present the predictions for the pseudo - rapidity and transverse momentum distributions of the ALPs and photons. Moreover, predictions for the fiducial cross-sections, derived considering the characteristics of the ALICE and LHCb detectors, are presented for different values of the ALP mass and the ALP - photon coupling.