Effective Theories for a light Axion-Light-Particle (ALP)

Authors

1. Brivio^a,b), M.B. Gavela^a), L. Merlo^a), K. Mimasu^c,d), J.M. No^c,e), R. del Rey^a), V. Sanz^c)

a) Departamento de Física Teórica and Instituto de Física Teórica, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
b) NBIA and Discovery Center, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
c) Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex, UK
d) Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology (CP3), Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
e) Department of Physics, King’s College London, UK

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The model description

The Standard Model (SM) is extended with the inclusion of a generic CP-odd scalar field, that is a singlet under the SM gauge symmetries. This new field is assumed to be an Axion-Like-Particle, i.e. the (pseudo) Nambu-Goldstone boson of a spontaneously broken U(1) symmetry, associated with a heavy scale f_a. As such, the ALP field respects an approximate shift symmetry that requires its couplings to be purely derivative and weighted by inverse powers of f_a. Moreover, its mass must be much lighter than f_a. The models supplied here assume the benchmark values f_a= 1 TeV, m_a = 1 MeV.

Two major frameworks for the electroweak sector are considered: a linear realization of electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB), typical of weakly coupled new physics, and a non-linear one, such as those in constructions involving new strongly interacting physics. In the first scenario, the ALP is coupled to a "linear" EFT (also called SMEFT), in which the Higgs boson belongs to an exact SU(2) doublet and the interaction terms are organized in an expansion in mass dimension. In the latter scenario, instead, two independent fields are introduced for the EW Goldstone bosons and for the physical Higgs, and one constructs a "chiral" EFT (sometimes also called non-linear EFT or HEFT), in which the effective operators are ordered according to a more complex counting that, for the Goldstone bosons sector, reduces to a derivative expansion.

The models presented here implement complete sets of CP-even operators for ALP interactions with the bosonic sector of the SM, up to next-to-leading terms in the effective expansions. These amount to 4 operators of dimension 5 for the linear EFT and to 18 operators with up to 4 derivatives for the chiral EFT. The chiral operators are defined with an NDA normalization, according to the notation used in ​arXiv:1701.05379.

Note that the models supplied contain only the definition of the ALP particle and of its interactions, and should therefore be loaded alongside the SM.

Please report bugs or questions to: ilaria.brivio@…

References

• I. Brivio, M.B. Gavela, L. Merlo, K. Mimasu, J.M. No, R. del Rey, V. Sanz, ALPs Effective Field Theory and Collider Signatures, ​arXiv:1701.05379

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Files

FeynRules sources

• ALP_chiral_Feynrules.tar.gz​ The Feynrules model file for the chiral EFT.
• ALP_linear_Feynrules.tar.gz​ The Feynrules model file for the linear EFT.

Mathematica notebook

• ALPs_EFT.nb​ Demo notebook

Pre-exported UFO models

• ALP_chiral_UFO.tar.gz​ The UFO model file for the chiral EFT.
• ALP_linear_UFO.tar.gz​ The UFO model file for the linear EFT.