Can a next-generation collider catch axion-like particles?

Researchers modeled how the proposed FCC-ee collider would hunt for axion-like particles (ALPs)—hypothetical particles that could explain dark matter or other mysteries—by looking for a three-photon signal from ALP production. The detector would reach sensitivity to ALP-photon couplings of 10^-6 GeV^-1 or better across different collision energies, beating current limits by orders of magnitude. This directly tests whether new particles hide in the electroweak sector that the Large Hadron Collider might miss.