Prospects of light-by-light scattering measurements and axion-like particle searches at the LHC

Ultra-peripheral collisions of heavy ions (UPCs) provide a clean environment for studies of two-photon interactions due to large impact parameters between incoming nuclei at which strong interactions are highly suppressed. In particular, UPCs were used by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC to establish the evidence of the light-by-light scattering process (LbyL). In addition, there has been a growing interest to studies of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) in photon-induced processes, specifically, to studies of production of axion-like particles (ALPs) that appear in a number of extensions of the Standard Model. The ATLAS and CMS managed to measure differential cross sections of LbyL process and improve limits on ALP-γ coupling constant in a range of masses between 5 and 100 GeV, while the region below 5 GeV can be addressed in the future ALICE 3 experiment, the proposed next-generation experiment for LHC Run 5 and beyond. In this work, a review of recent results on LbyL and searches for ALPs at the Large Hadron Collider will be given, and future prospects for the measurements will be discussed.