Linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in the search for axion-like particles

Abstract

Assuming the existence of axion-like particles (ALPs), the standard Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) amplitudes for the linear Breit-Wheeler (BW) pair production process are shown to be supplemented by an additional ALP-mediated amplitude. We compute the coherently combined cross section and show that, for pseudoscalar ALPs, interference with QED produces an asymmetric Fano-type resonance. We propose experimental observation of the BW process with real photons as a complementary probe of MeV-scale ALPs, coupling jointly with photons and electron-positron pairs, on the basis that it occupies a kinematic region not readily accessible to other ALP search methods.