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MINER reactor based search for axionlike particles using sapphire (Al2O3) detectors

M. Mirzakhani1, W. Baker1, M. Chaudhuri2, J. B. Dent3, R. Dey2, B. Dutta1, V. Iyer4, A. Jastram5, V. K. S. Kashyap2 et al.

A. Kubik6, K. Lang7, R. Mahapatra1, S. Maludze1, N. Mirabolfathi1, B. Mohanty2, D. Mondal2, H. Neog8, J. L. Newstead9, M. Platt1, S. Sahoo1, J. Sander10, L. E. Strigari1, and J. Walker3

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 032013 – Published 28 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/tbwx-b5lx

Abstract

The absence of definitive results for WIMP dark matter has sparked growing interest in alternative dark matter candidates, such as axions and axionlike 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 h TRIGA nuclear reactor core, positioned approximately 4 m away. This experiment employed cryogenic sapphire detectors with a low detection threshold (≈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 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.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 032013– Published 28 August, 2025
  • Received 30 April 2025
  • Accepted 5 August 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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