New Insights Into Lepton-Axion Interactions

Pacific
Speaker(s) Jeff Dror (UC Santa Cruz)
Video
Description

Please contact erule@berkeley.edu or anupam.ray@berkeley.edu for zoom links.

Axion-like particles (ALPs) below the electroweak scale are a simple, natural extension to the Standard Model and, as such, are one of the primary targets for the large-scale experimental effort to search for hidden sectors. In this talk, I revisit the theoretical framework of ALP interactions with leptons, finding some unexpected features in some amplitudes. Most importantly, I will show that there exist strong bounds on “leptophilic” ALPs from a combination of charged meson decays, W boson measurements, and proton beam dump experiments. These bounds dramatically shape allowed ALP parameter space and will be significantly improved with dedicated searches.