Coupling QCD-Scale Axionlike Particles to Gluons

© 2019 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. We present a novel data-driven method for determining the hadronic interaction strengths of axionlike particles (ALPs) with QCD-scale masses. Using our method, it is possible to calculate the hadronic production and decay rates of ALPs, alo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Aloni, Daniel, Soreq, Yotam, Williams, Mike
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Physical Society (APS) 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/134833
Description
Summary:© 2019 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. We present a novel data-driven method for determining the hadronic interaction strengths of axionlike particles (ALPs) with QCD-scale masses. Using our method, it is possible to calculate the hadronic production and decay rates of ALPs, along with many of the largest ALP decay rates to exclusive final states. To illustrate the impact on QCD-scale ALP phenomenology, we consider the scenario where the ALP-gluon coupling is dominant over the ALP coupling to photons, electroweak bosons, and all fermions for mπ ma3 GeV. We emphasize, however, that our method can easily be generalized to any set of ALP couplings to standard model particles. Finally, using the approach developed here, we provide calculations for the branching fractions of ηc→VV decays; i.e., ηc decays into two vector mesons, which are consistent with the known experimental values.