Discovery prospects for photophobic axion-like particles in the $WWjj$ final state at the High-Luminosity LHC
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| Formato: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Feng, Jiaojiao Mao, Ying-nan Wang, Kechen |
| author_facet | Feng, Jiaojiao Mao, Ying-nan Wang, Kechen |
| contents | We evaluate discovery prospects for photophobic axion-like particles (ALPs) in the $WWjj$ final state at the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC; $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV, $L=3$ ab$^{-1}$). In the photophobic limit ($g_{aγγ}=0$), ALPs couple to electroweak gauge bosons and are produced in association with two jets ($pp\to jj a$) via both $s$-channel electroweak exchange and vector-boson-fusion (VBF)-like topologies, followed by $a\to W^+W^-$ decay. We target the different-flavour dilepton mode $W^+W^-\to e^\pmμ^\mpν\barν$ with two jets and moderate missing transverse momentum. The analysis employs a two-step strategy: an initial preselection that defines the signal-like final state, followed by a multivariate analysis (MVA) trained on dijet and dileptonic-$WW$ kinematics from both the $s$-channel and VBF-like production mechanisms to separate signal from background; the MVA threshold is optimized independently at each $m_a$. We present $2σ$ and $5σ$ discovery sensitivities for the ALP-$W$ coupling $g_{aWW}$ across the $170$--$4000$ GeV mass range. For $260$ GeV $\le m_a \le 1500$ GeV, the $2σ$ ($5σ$) sensitivity is approximately flat around 0.61 (0.76) TeV$^{-1}$. We also report model-independent discovery thresholds for the fiducial quantity $σ(pp\to jj a)\,\mathrm{Br}(a\to W^+W^-)$ over the same mass range to enable reinterpretation for other models. These results indicate that the $WWjj$ topology offers competitive and complementary sensitivity to heavy photophobic ALPs at the HL-LHC. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_21003 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Discovery prospects for photophobic axion-like particles in the $WWjj$ final state at the High-Luminosity LHC Feng, Jiaojiao Mao, Ying-nan Wang, Kechen High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Experiment We evaluate discovery prospects for photophobic axion-like particles (ALPs) in the $WWjj$ final state at the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC; $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV, $L=3$ ab$^{-1}$). In the photophobic limit ($g_{aγγ}=0$), ALPs couple to electroweak gauge bosons and are produced in association with two jets ($pp\to jj a$) via both $s$-channel electroweak exchange and vector-boson-fusion (VBF)-like topologies, followed by $a\to W^+W^-$ decay. We target the different-flavour dilepton mode $W^+W^-\to e^\pmμ^\mpν\barν$ with two jets and moderate missing transverse momentum. The analysis employs a two-step strategy: an initial preselection that defines the signal-like final state, followed by a multivariate analysis (MVA) trained on dijet and dileptonic-$WW$ kinematics from both the $s$-channel and VBF-like production mechanisms to separate signal from background; the MVA threshold is optimized independently at each $m_a$. We present $2σ$ and $5σ$ discovery sensitivities for the ALP-$W$ coupling $g_{aWW}$ across the $170$--$4000$ GeV mass range. For $260$ GeV $\le m_a \le 1500$ GeV, the $2σ$ ($5σ$) sensitivity is approximately flat around 0.61 (0.76) TeV$^{-1}$. We also report model-independent discovery thresholds for the fiducial quantity $σ(pp\to jj a)\,\mathrm{Br}(a\to W^+W^-)$ over the same mass range to enable reinterpretation for other models. These results indicate that the $WWjj$ topology offers competitive and complementary sensitivity to heavy photophobic ALPs at the HL-LHC. |
| title | Discovery prospects for photophobic axion-like particles in the $WWjj$ final state at the High-Luminosity LHC |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Experiment |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.21003 |