Light-by-Light Scattering Constraint on Born-Infeld Theory

The recent measurement by ATLAS of light-by-light scattering in LHC Pb-Pb collisions is the first direct evidence for this basic process. We find that it excludes a range of the mass scale of a nonlinear Born-Infeld extension of QED that is less than or similar to 100 GeV, a much stronger constraint than those derived previously. In the case of a Born-Infeld extension of the standard model in which the U(1)(Y) hypercharge gauge symmetry is realized nonlinearly, the limit on the corresponding mass reach is similar to 90 GeV, which, in turn, imposes a lower limit of greater than or similar to 11 TeV on the magnetic monopole mass in such a U(1)(Y) Born-Infeld theory.