BSM searches with LUXE
Hunting axion-like particles (ALPs)
In addition to probing strong-field QED physics processes, the enormous rate of photons produced in LUXE (mainly through non-linear Compton scattering in the e-laser setup) can be used to search for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). One possible scenario is axion-like particles (ALPs) being created via Primakoff production in the LUXE photon beam dump. By placing a calorimeter at a fixed distance behind the photon dump and ensuring a low background in this detection area, decays of the ALPs to two photons can be probed. With a 1 × 1 m^2 detector, a sensitivity can be achieved that exceeds that of other existing experiments searching for ALPs in the 100 MeV range.
This aspect of LUXE is called LUXE-NPOD (LUXE New Physics search with Optical Dump).
Bibliography:
- «LUXE: A new experiment to study non-perturbative QED in electron-laser and photon-laser collisions» by A. Levy https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.00403
