Kavli Affiliate: Hitoshi Murayama
| Summary:
We point out that ultra-peripheral Au+Au collision data collected at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, operational during 2000-2026, can be used to search for axion-like particles coupled to photons via the resonant process $γγto a to γγ$. Exploiting the $Z^4$ enhancement of the two-photon luminosity in heavy-ion collisions and the low photon energy thresholds achievable at RHIC, we simulate signal and background processes, the latter dominated by light-by-light scattering, hadronic resonance production, and misidentified $e^+e^-$ pairs, and estimate upper limits on the ALP-photon coupling $g_aγγ$ assuming $1.9~textnb^-1$ of existing data collected by the PHENIX experiment. We find sensitivity to ALP masses in the range $2~textGeV lesssim m_a lesssim 5~textGeV$ with couplings $g_aγγ gtrsim 4times 10^-4~textGeV^-1$, probing previously unexplored regions of parameter space. Access to larger luminosity datasets could substantially extend the sensitivity of this search, motivating a dedicated analysis of ultra-peripheral collision data collected at RHIC by PHENIX as well as other experiments.
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