TY - JOUR
T1 - Quark flavor phenomenology of the QCD axion
AU - Camalich, Jorge Martin
AU - Pospelov, Maxim
AU - Vuong, Pham Ngoc Hoa
AU - Ziegler, Robert
AU - Zupan, Jure
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.
PY - 2020/7/1
Y1 - 2020/7/1
N2 - Axion models with generation-dependent Peccei-Quinn charges can lead to flavor-changing neutral currents, thus motivating QCD axion searches at precision flavor experiments. We rigorously derive limits on the most general effective flavor-violating couplings from current measurements and assess their discovery potential. For two-body decays, we use available experimental data to derive limits on q→q′a decay rates for all flavor transitions. Axion contributions to neutral-meson mixing are calculated in a systematic way using chiral perturbation theory and operator product expansion. We also discuss in detail baryonic decays and three-body meson decays, which can lead to the best search strategies for some of the couplings. For instance, a strong limit on the Λ→na transition can be derived from the supernova SN 1987A. In the near future, dedicated searches for q→q′a decays at ongoing experiments could potentially test Peccei-Quinn breaking scales up to 1012 GeV at NA62 or KOTO and up to 109 GeV at Belle II or BES III.
AB - Axion models with generation-dependent Peccei-Quinn charges can lead to flavor-changing neutral currents, thus motivating QCD axion searches at precision flavor experiments. We rigorously derive limits on the most general effective flavor-violating couplings from current measurements and assess their discovery potential. For two-body decays, we use available experimental data to derive limits on q→q′a decay rates for all flavor transitions. Axion contributions to neutral-meson mixing are calculated in a systematic way using chiral perturbation theory and operator product expansion. We also discuss in detail baryonic decays and three-body meson decays, which can lead to the best search strategies for some of the couplings. For instance, a strong limit on the Λ→na transition can be derived from the supernova SN 1987A. In the near future, dedicated searches for q→q′a decays at ongoing experiments could potentially test Peccei-Quinn breaking scales up to 1012 GeV at NA62 or KOTO and up to 109 GeV at Belle II or BES III.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089987296&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85089987296&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.102.015023
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.102.015023
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85089987296
SN - 2470-0010
VL - 102
JO - Physical Review D
JF - Physical Review D
IS - 1
M1 - 015023
ER -