ALP pair production at the LHC

Abstract

We study axion-like particle (ALP) pair production at the LHC, investigating its sensitivity to the simultaneous presence of dimension-5 and dimension-6 ALP interactions. Focusing on the signature with four isolated photons, we analyze for the first time the non-resonant process $gg\to aa$, finding that it can constrain significantly ALP interactions, already at an integrated luminosity of 300 fb$^{-1}$. Particular attention is paid to the multidimensional nature of the ALP parameter space. To this end, we present a re-interpretation of a search for the Higgs-resonant process $gg\to h\to aa$ by the ATLAS Collaboration, recasting their results within a three-parameter space. We find that the multi-dimensional constraints resulting from both non-resonant and Higgs-resonant ALP pair production exhibit non-trivial features, that are expected to extend to other searches in which the ALPs decay into Standard Model particles.