Search for an axion-like particle with forward proton scattering in association with photon pairs at ATLAS
G. Aad, B. Abbott, K. Abeling, Nils Julius Abicht, S. H. Abidi, A. Aboulhorma, H. Abramowicz, H. Abreu, Y. Abulaiti, A. C. Abusleme Hoffman, B. S. Acharya, C. Adam Bourdarios, L. Adamczyk, L. Adámek, S. V. Addepalli, M. J. Addison, J. Adelman, A. Adıgüzel, T. Adye, A. A. Affolder, Y. Afik, M. N. Agaras, J. Agarwala, A. Aggarwal, C. Agheorghiesei, A. Ahmad, F. Ahmadov, W. S. Ahmed, S. Ahuja, X. Ai, G. Aielli, M. Ait Tamlihat, B. Aitbenchikh, I. Aizenberg, M. Akbiyik, T. P. A. Åkesson, A. V. Akimov, D. Akiyama, Nilima Nilesh Akolkar, K. Al Khoury, G. L. Alberghi, J. Albert, P. Albicocco, Guillaume Lucas Albouy, S. Alderweireldt, M. Aleksa, I. N. Aleksandrov, C. Alexa, T. Alexopoulos, A. Alfonsi, F. Alfonsi, M. Algren, M. Alhroob, B. Ali, Hanadi Ali, S. Ali, S. W. Alibocus, M. Aliev, G. Alimonti, W. Alkakhi, C. Allaire, B. M. M. Allbrooke, Julia Frances Allen, C. Flores, P. P. Allport, A. Aloisio, F. Alonso, C. Alpigiani, M. Alvarez Estevez, A. Álvarez Fernández, M. G. Alviggi, Moustafa H. Aly, Y. Amaral Coutinho, A. Ambler, Christoph Amelung, M. Amerl, C. G. Ames, D. Amidei, S. P. Amor Dos Santos, K. R. Amos, V. Ananiev, C. Anastopoulos, T. Andeen, J. K. Anders, S. Y. Andrean, A. Andreazza, S. Angelidakis, A. Angerami, A. V. Anisenkov, A. Annovi, C. Antel, M. T. Anthony, E. Antipov, M. Antonelli, D. J. A. Antrim, F. Anulli, M. Aoki, T. Aoki, J. A. Aparisi Pozo, M. A. Aparo
Abstract
A bstract A search for forward proton scattering in association with light-by-light scattering mediated by an axion-like particle is presented, using the ATLAS Forward Proton spectrometer to detect scattered protons and the central ATLAS detector to detect pairs of outgoing photons. Proton-proton collision data recorded in 2017 at a centre-of-mass energy of $$ \sqrt{s} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msqrt><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:msqrt></mml:math> = 13 TeV were analysed, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 14.6 fb − 1 . A total of 441 candidate events were selected. A search was made for a narrow resonance in the diphoton mass distribution, corresponding to an axion-like particle (ALP) with mass in the range 150–1600 GeV. No excess is observed above a smooth background. Upper limits on the production cross section of a narrow resonance are set as a function of the mass, and are interpreted as upper limits on the ALP production coupling constant, assuming 100% decay branching ratio into a photon pair. The inferred upper limit on the coupling constant is in the range 0.04–0.09 TeV − 1 at 95% confidence level.