Hilbert series for ALP EFTs

Abstract: Axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) are ubiquitous in popular attempts to solve supercalifragilisticexpialidocious puzzles of Nature. A widespread and vivid experimental programme spanning a vast range of mass scales and decades of couplings strives to find evidence for these elusive but theoretically well-motivated particles. In the absence of clear guiding principle, effective field theories (EFTs) prove to be an efficient tool in this experimental quest. Hilbert series technologies are a privileged instrument of the EFT toolbox to enumerate and classify operators. In this work, we compute explicitly the Hilbert series capturing the interactions of a generic ALP to the Standard Model particles above and below the electroweak symmetry scale, which allow us to build bases of operators up to dimension 8. In particular, we revealed a remarkable structure of the Hilbert series that isolates the shift-symmetry breaking and preserving interactions. In addition, with the Hilbert series method, we enumerate the sources of CP violation in terms of CP-even, CP-odd and CP-violating operators. Furthermore, we provide an ancillary file of the Hilbert series up to dimension 15 to supplement our findings, which can be used for further analysis and exploration.