• Accepted Paper

Discovery prospects for photophobic axionlike particles at a 100 TeV proton-proton collider

Zilong Ding, Jiaojiao Feng, Ying-nan Mao, Kechen Wang, and Yiheng Xiong

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 31 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/czhh-5l7v

Abstract

We study heavy photophobic axion-like particles (ALPs) in the limit of an effectively vanishing diphoton coupling, gaγγ≃0, for which diphoton production and decay are suppressed and collider phenomenology is driven by electroweak interactions (aWW, aZγ, aZZ). We perform detector-level searches at a future s= 100 TeV pp collider (SppC/FCC-hh), with an integrated luminosity of ℒ= 20 ab−1. We consider a→Zγ and a→W+W− decays. For pp→jja we include both s-channel electroweak exchange and vector boson fusion (VBF)-like topologies, while the tri-W signature arises from associated production pp→W±a (via s-channel exchange) followed by a→W+W−. We analyze three final states–Zγjj with Z→ℓ+ℓ−, tri-W (W±W±W∓) with same-sign dimuons plus jets, and W+W−jj with opposite-sign, different-flavor dilepton (e±μ∓) plus jets. Among the two WW final states, the VBF-assisted jja(→W+W−) channel overtakes the purely s-channel tri-W 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 s=100 TeV and ℒ= 20 ab−1, we present discovery sensitivities to the ALP–W coupling gaWW over ma∈[100,7000] GeV. In parallel, we report model-independent discovery thresholds on σ×Br for pp→jja with a→Zγ and a→W+W−, as well as for associated production pp→W±a with a→W+W−. 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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