PreprintCC BY 4.0arXiv
Searching for Axions from Atmospheric Kaon Decays
Abstract
Cosmic-ray interactions in the Earth's atmosphere produce copious secondary mesons, providing a natural laboratory for searches for new physics. We investigate the atmospheric production of axions through the rare kaon decay K+→π+a. If sufficiently long-lived, these axions can reach large underground detectors such as Super-Kamiokande and IceCube and decay through the diphoton channel, a→γγ. Using data from Super-Kamiokande and IceCube, we derive constraints on the axion decay constant fa for masses up to ma∼ 350 MeV. We demonstrate that atmospheric kaon decays provide a novel probe of axion parameter space, yielding constraints complementary to existing bounds.
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BibTeX
@misc{raza2026searching,
title = {{Searching for Axions from Atmospheric Kaon Decays}},
author = {Tousif Raza},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.21991},
eprint = {2609.21991},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21991},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Searching for Axions from Atmospheric Kaon Decays
AU - Tousif Raza
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.21991
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21991
AB - Cosmic-ray interactions in the Earth's atmosphere produce copious secondary mesons, providing a natural laboratory for searches for new physics. We investigate the atmospheric production of axions through the rare kaon decay K^+→π^+a. If sufficiently long-lived, these axions can reach large underground detectors such as Super-Kamiokande and IceCube and decay through the diphoton channel, a→γγ. Using data from Super-Kamiokande and IceCube, we derive constraints on the axion decay constant f_a for masses up to m_a∼ 350 MeV. We demonstrate that atmospheric kaon decays provide a novel probe of axion parameter space, yielding constraints complementary to existing bounds.
ER -