Phenomenology of axion-meson mixing and scattering processes

Abstract: We study the mixing between a generic axion-like particle (ALP) and the light pseudoscalar mesons within chiral perturbation theory ($χ$PT), and its consequences for low-energy scattering and decay processes. Starting from the most general ALP effective Lagrangian, we derive the ALP-meson kinetic and mass mixing induced at leading order in the ALP decay constant and isospin breaking for arbitrary ALP masses. As a result, we obtain the physical ALP mass to $\mathcal{O}(F<sup>2/f_a<sup>2)$, recovering the QCD-axion limit and finding that any ALP with a vanishing bare mass shares the QCD-axion mass. We provide a compact parameterization of every four-body amplitude involving pseudoscalar mesons and an arbitrary number of ALPs. As an illustration, we show the $K\bar{K}\to P<sup>0a$ scattering. The framework applies for general ALP masses and couplings and consistently incorporates isospin breaking, essential for otherwise forbidden processes.