Limits on Axion Couplings from the First 79.8-Day Data of the PandaX-II Experiment

Changbo Fu, Xiaopeng Zhou, Xun Chen, Yunhua Chen, Xiangyi Cui, Deqing Fang, Karl Giboni, Franco Giuliani, Ke Han, Xingtao Huang, Xiangdong Ji, Yonglin Ju, Siao Lei, Shaoli Li, Huaxuan Liu, Jianglai Liu, Yugang Ma, Cajun Mao, Xiangxiang Ren, i Tan, Hongwei Wang, Timing Wang, Meng Wang, Qiuhong Wang, Siguang Wang, Xuming Wang, Zhou Wang, Zhou Wang, Mengjiao Xiao, Pengwei Xie, Binbin Yan, Yong Yang, Jianfeng Yue, Hongguang Zhang, Tao Zhang, Li Zhao, Ning Zhou

Published 2017-07-25Version 1

We report new searches for the solar axions and galactic axion-like dark matter particles, using the first low-background data from the PandaX-II experiment at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, corresponding to a total exposure of about $2.7\times 10^4$ kg$\cdot$day. No solar axion or galactic axion-like dark matter particle candidate has been identified. The upper limit on the axion-electron coupling ($g_{Ae}$) from the solar flux is found to be about $4.35 \times 10^{-12}$ in the mass range from $10^{-5}$ to 1 keV with 90% confidence level, similar to the recent LUX result. We also report a new best limit from the $^{57}$Fe de-excitation. On the other hand, the upper limit from the galactic axions is on the order of $10^{-13}$ in the mass range from 1 keV to 10 keV with 90% confidence level, slightly improved compared with the LUX.