Probing Neutrinophilic Axion-Like Particles in Tritium Beta Decay

Abstract

We investigate the prospects for constraining neutrinophilic axion-like particles via measurements of the tritium beta decay spectrum, as performed by the KATRIN experiment and its planned TRISTAN detector upgrade. We study in detail the resulting spectral modifications and the corresponding experimental sensitivity. The relevant complementary searches are also discussed for comparison and we derive the most up-to-date and robust constraints on keV-scale neutrinophilic axion-like particles, covering both lepton-number-conserving and lepton-number-violating interactions. Cosmological constraints are generally more stringent; however, this conclusion relies on the assumption that the particles remain unchanged from the early universe to the present day. We therefore construct a model in which the neutrinophilic axion-like particle, being a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of an extended scalar sector, emerges from a spontaneous symmetry breaking featuring a non-trivial thermal history. We show that the model naturally evades the conventional cosmological bounds, allowing tritium beta decay measurements to provide the leading constraints.