- Accepted Paper
Discovery prospects for photophobic axionlike particles at a 100 TeV proton-proton collider
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 31 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/czhh-5l7v
Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 31 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/czhh-5l7v
We study heavy photophobic axion-like particles (ALPs) in the limit of an effectively vanishing diphoton coupling, , for which diphoton production and decay are suppressed and collider phenomenology is driven by electroweak interactions (, , ). We perform detector-level searches at a future 100 TeV collider (SppC/FCC-hh), with an integrated luminosity of 20 ab. We consider and decays. For we include both -channel electroweak exchange and vector boson fusion (VBF)-like topologies, while the tri- signature arises from associated production (via -channel exchange) followed by . We analyze three final states– with , tri- () with same-sign dimuons plus jets, and with opposite-sign, different-flavor dilepton () plus jets. Among the two final states, the VBF-assisted channel overtakes the purely -channel tri- mode for $m_a\gtrsim 1~\TeV$, reflecting 100~TeV signal/background kinematic shifts beyond naive energy/luminosity rescaling. A boosted-decision-tree (BDT) classifier built from kinematic observables provides the final signal–background separation, using detector-level simulations of signal and high-statistics SM backgrounds. At TeV and 20 ab, we present discovery sensitivities to the ALP– coupling over GeV. In parallel, we report model-independent discovery thresholds on for with and , as well as for associated production with . Taken together, the three channels deliver broad coverage and mutually reinforcing checks across decay modes and production regimes, strengthening robustness against channel-dependent systematics. The 100~TeV program extends the discovery reach well beyond 14~TeV projections within a general effective field theory (EFT) description that does not assume a specific ultraviolet completion.
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