Axion searches with NA62

by Babette Dobrich (CERN), Giuseppe Ruggiero (Lancaster University (GB)), Robert Andreas Ziegler (CERN)

Thursday 12 Jul 2018, 11:00 → 13:00 Europe/Zurich

4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

Besides looking for the Standard Model process K-> pi nu nubar, NA62 provides a unique environment to also search for QCD axions or axion-like particles produced in Kaon decays or beam dump. We first discuss the theoretical motivations for QCD axions with large flavor-violating couplings, for which the strongest bounds on the axion mass arise from precision flavor experiments looking for K -> pi a. We then discuss the prospects of NA62 to further improve the sensitivity of these searches using the K-> pi nu nubar data set, and finally present the discovery potential for axion-like particles by NA62 running in beam dump mode.