The absence of definitive results for WIMP dark matter has sparked growing interest in alternative dark matter candidates, such as axions and Axion-Like Particles (ALPs), which also provide insight into the strong CP problem. The Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER), conducted at the Nuclear Science Center of Texas A&M University, investigated ALPs near a 1 MW TRIGA nuclear reactor core, positioned approximately 4 meters away. This experiment employed cryogenic sapphire detectors with a low detection threshold (approximately 100 eV), equipped with a Transition Edge Sensor capable of detecting athermal phonons. Due to the low-background environment, we were able to exclude ALPs with axion-photon coupling and axion-electron coupling as small as gaγγ=10−5 and gaee=10−7, respectively. Energy depositions below 3 keV were not considered and remain blinded for our Coherent Elastic Neutrino Nucleus Scattering (CEvNS) analysis. This is the first result demonstrating the MINER experiment's potential to probe low-mass ALPs, enabled by its low-threshold detector and proximity to a reactor.
@article{arxiv.2504.20960,
title = {MINER Reactor Based Search for Axion-Like Particles Using Sapphire (Al2O3) Detectors},
author = {M. Mirzakhani and W. Baker and M. Chaudhuri and J. B. Dent and R. Dey and B. Dutta and V. Iyer and A. Jastram and V. K. S. Kashyap and A. Kubik and K. Lang and R. Mahapatra and S. Maludze and N. Mirabolfathi and B. Mohanty and D. Mondal and H. Neog and J. L. Newstead and M. Platt and S. Sahoo and J. Sander and L. E. Strigari and J. Walker},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.20960},
year = {2025}
}