Theory seminar (11am): Gabriele Levati: Axion-like particles and CP violation

Thursday 25 Sept 2025, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Amsterdam

Positron room (Nikhef)

Axion-like particles (ALPs) are a class of new physics (NP) candidates emerging as the low energy remnants of a variety of well-motivated UV-completions of the Standard Model (SM). CP-violating probes represent a promising and yet relatively unexplored way to look for ALPs and to investigate their phenomenology. In this talk, I will offer a thorough and up-to-date overview on this class of NP candidates, focusing mainly on their flavour-preserving, CP- violating interactions with SM fields.
In the first part of the talk, I will discuss in detail the phenomenology associated to CP-violating ALPs, with a focus on the possibility to probe them by studying their indirect impact on the electric dipole moments (EDMs) of particles, nucleons, nuclei and molecules. In the second part of the talk, I will rather muse on the possible origin of these NP candidates. In doing so, I will provide an overview of the possible UV completions leading to the appearance of a CP-violating ALP and I will discuss the different predictions that can be drawn from each specific scenario.