Photon-jet events as a probe of axionlike particles at the LHC

Abstract

Axionlike particles (ALPs) are predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model. When ALP mass lies in the range of MeV-GeV, the cosmology and astrophysics will be largely irrelevant. In this work, we investigate such light ALPs through the ALP-strahlung process pp→Va(→γγ) at the 14 TeV LHC with an integrated luminosity of 3000 fb-1 (high-luminosity LHC). With the photon-jet algorithm, we demonstrate that our approach can probe the mass range of ALPs, which has been inaccessible in previous LHC experiments. The obtained result can surpass the existing limits on ALP-photon coupling in the ALP mass range from 0.3 to 10 GeV.