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  • Open Access

Long-lived axionlike particles from electromagnetic cascades

Samuel Patrone1,*, Nikita Blinov2,†, and Ryan Plestid1,3,‡

  • 1Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
  • 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada
  • 3Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, 1 Esplanade des Particules, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland

  • *Contact author: spatrone@caltech.edu
  • †Contact author: nblinov@yorku.ca
  • ‡Contact author: ryan.plestid@cern.ch
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 075009 – Published 9 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/38hq-qk7k

Abstract

We study axionlike particles (ALPs) in beam dump experiments, focusing on the Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP, at CERN) experiment and the Beam Dump eXperiment (BDX, at JLab). Many existing projections for sensitivity to ALPs in beam dump experiments have focused on production from either the primary proton/electron beam, or—in the case of SHiP—the secondary (high-energy) photons produced by neutral meson decays (e.g., π0→γγ). In this work, we study the subsequent production of axions from the full electromagnetic shower in the target, finding order-of-magnitude enhancements in the visible decay yields across a wide range of axion masses. We update SHiP’s sensitivity curve and provide new projections for BDX. Both experiments will be able to reach currently unexplored regions of ALP parameter space.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 075009– Published 9 April, 2026
  • Received 10 November 2025
  • Accepted 24 March 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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