The Grenoble Axion Haloscope platform (GrAHal): development plan and first results

Abstract

In this note we report on the development plans and first results of the Grenoble Axion Haloscope (GrAHal) project. It is aimed at developing a haloscope platform dedicated to the search for axion dark matter particles. We discuss its general framework and the plans to reach the sensitivity required to probe well known invisible axion models, over particularly relevant axion masses and coupling regions. We also present our first haloscope prototype and the result of its test run at liquid He temperature, setting a new exclusion limit $g_{a \gamma \gamma} \leq 2.2 \times 10^{-13}~ \text{GeV}^{-1}$ ($g_{a \gamma \gamma} \leq 22 \times g_{\text{KSVZ}}$) around 6.375 GHz ($m_a \simeq 26.37$ $\mu \text{eV}$).