2018/10/31 by Jonathan L. Ouellet, Chiara P. Salemi, Joshua W. Foster +12 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-ex #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.122.121802
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 121802 (2019) · 7 pages, 3 Figures. Submitted to PRL
arxiv created 2019/03/12 · arxiv updated 2019/04/03
The axion is a promising dark matter candidate, which was originally proposed to solve the strong-CP problem in particle physics. To date, the available parameter space for axion and axion-like particle dark matter is relatively unexplored, particularly at masses ma\lesssim1 μeV. ABRACADABRA is a new experimental program to search for axion dark matter over a broad range of masses, 10-12\lesssim ma\lesssim10-6 eV. ABRACADABRA-10 cm is a small-scale prototype for a future detector that could be sensitive to the QCD axion. In this Letter, we present the first results from a 1 month search for axions with ABRACADABRA-10 cm. We find no evidence for axion-like cosmic dark matter and set 95% C.L. upper limits on the axion-photon coupling between gaγγ<1.4×10-10 GeV-1 and gaγγ<3.3×10-9 GeV-1 over the mass range 3.1×10-10 eV - 8.3×10-9 eV. These results are competitive with the most stringent astrophysical constraints in this mass range.