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arXiv · 2607.05572

Linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in the search for axion-like particles

Thomas Rook·Wei Wu·Stuart P. D. Mangles·Steven J. Rose
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Abstract

Assuming the existence of axion-like particles (ALPs), the standard Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) amplitudes for the linear Breit-Wheeler (BW) pair production process are shown to be supplemented by an additional ALP-mediated amplitude. We compute the coherently combined cross section and show that, for pseudoscalar ALPs, interference with QED produces an asymmetric Fano-type resonance. We propose experimental observation of the BW process with real photons as a complementary probe of MeV-scale ALPs, coupling jointly with photons and electron-positron pairs, on the basis that it occupies a kinematic region not readily accessible to other ALP search methods.

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Thomas Rook, Wei Wu, Stuart P. D. Mangles, Steven J. Rose. 2026-07-06. Linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in the search for axion-like particles. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.05572

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