PT Journal AU ATLAS Collaboration (Aad, Gea Amos, KR Aparisi Pozo, JA Bailey, AJ Bouchhar, N Cabrera Urban, S Cantero, J Cardillo, F Castillo Gimenez, V Chitishvili, M Costa, MJ Didenko Escobar, C Fiorini, L Fullana Torregrosa, E Fuster, J Garcia, C Garcia Navarro, JE Gomez Delegido, AJ Gonzalez de la Hoz, S Gonzalvo Rodriguez, GR Guerrero Rojas, JGR Lacasta, C Marti-Garcia, S Martinez Agullo, P Miralles Lopez, M Mitsou, VA Monsonis Romero, L Moreno Llacer, M Munoz Perez, D Navarro-Gonzalez, J Poveda, J Prades IbaƱez, A Rubio Jimenez, A Ruiz-Martinez, A Sabatini, P Salt, J Sanchez Sebastian, V Sayago Galvan, I Senthilkumar, V Soldevila, U Sanchez, J Torro Pastor, E Valero, A Valiente Moreno, E Valls Ferrer, JA Varriale, L Villaplana Perez, M Vos, M TI Search for an axion-like particle with forward proton scattering in association with photon pairs at ATLAS SO Journal of High Energy Physics JI J. High Energy Phys. PY 2023 BP 234 EP 38pp VL 07 IS 7 DI 10.1007/JHEP07(2023)234 LA English DE CP Violation; Hadron-Hadron Scattering AB A search for forward proton scattering in association with light-by-light scattering mediated by an axion-like particle is presented, using the ATLAS Forward Proton spectrometer to detect scattered protons and the central ATLAS detector to detect pairs of outgoing photons. Proton-proton collision data recorded in 2017 at a centre-of-mass energy of root s = 13TeV were analysed, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 14.6 fb(-1). A total of 441 candidate events were selected. A search was made for a narrow resonance in the diphoton mass distribution, corresponding to an axion-like particle (ALP) with mass in the range 150-1600 GeV. No excess is observed above a smooth background. Upper limits on the production cross section of a narrow resonance are set as a function of the mass, and are interpreted as upper limits on the ALP production coupling constant, assuming 100% decay branching ratio into a photon pair. The inferred upper limit on the coupling constant is in the range 0.04-0.09TeV-1 at 95% confidence level. ER