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Axion-like particle production from lepton-nucleon scattering in chiral effective theory

Qian-Qian Guo1,2,*, Xiong-Hui Cao3,†, Zhi-Hui Guo1,‡, and Hai-Qing Zhou2,§

  • *Contact author: qianqianguo@seu.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: xhcao@itp.ac.cn
  • ‡Contact author: zhguo@hebtu.edu.cn
  • §Contact author: zhouhq@seu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 034030 – Published 25 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pw8q-xknh

Abstract

In this work we study the axion/axion-like particle production from the lepton–nucleon scattering in the low-energy region, i.e., the ℓN→ℓNa processes, ℓ being the electron or muon and N the proton or neutron. We simultaneously include three different types of axion interaction couplings within the chiral effective field theory, namely the axion–nucleon–nucleon couplings gaNN, axion–photon–photon coupling gaγγ, and axion–photon–vector meson resonance couplings gρaγ and gωaγ. Vast inputs from the lattice QCD and hadron phenomenological studies are used to fix the unknown couplings. The relative strengths of different axion interactions in the ℓN→ℓNa processes are then revealed. We provide detailed predictions for the differential cross sections with respect to various angles and axion energy, as well as the total cross sections in the low-energy region around production thresholds, both for the Kim-Shifman-Vainstein-Zakharov (KSVZ) and Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky (DFSZ) axion models.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 034030– Published 25 February, 2026
  • Received 14 April 2025
  • Accepted 29 January 2026
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