Nuclear power plants are not only vital sources of clean energy but also powerful facilities for probing new physics beyond the Standard Model. Due to the intense gamma-ray flux and an appropriate energy conditions, they are particularly well-suited for searches of light hypothetical particles such as sub-MeV axions and axion-like particles (ALPs). In this work, we propose to search for the ALPs in the REactor Neutrino COherent scattering Detection Experiment (RECODE), where two low-threshold, high-purity germanium detectors are placed at 11 m (near point) and 22 m (far point) from a 3.4 GW nuclear reactor at Sanmen nuclear power plant. With a 10 kg⋅year exposure, we demonstrate that the expected sensitivities to the ALP couplings to the electrons and photons are competitive with or surpass the available results from the beam-dump experiments. A planned upgrade to 100 kg⋅year will fully cover the so-called { cosmological triangle} region, probing unexplored parameter space relevant to axions.
@article{arxiv.2509.01538,
title = {Hunting for Axions in REactor neutrino COherent scattering Detection Experiment},
author = {Wei Dai and Yuanlin Gong and Guanhua Gu and Liangliang Su and Li Wang and Lei Wu and Yongcheng Wu and Litao Yang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.01538},
year = {2025}
}