Search for sub-eV axion-like particles in a stimulated resonant photon-photon collider with two laser beams based on a novel method to discriminate pressure-independent components

Abstract: Sub-eV axion-like particles (ALPs) have been searched for by focusing two-color near-infrared pulse lasers into a vacuum along a common optical axis. Within the focused quasi-parallel collision system created by combining a creation field ($2.5\,\mathrm{mJ}/47\,\mathrm{fs}$ Ti:Sapphire laser) and a background inducing field ($1.5\,\mathrm{mJ}/9\,\mathrm{ns}$ Nd:YAG laser), the detection of signal photons via stimulated resonant photon-photon scattering by exchanging ALPs was attempted in a vacuum chamber. The signal wavelength can be determined via energy-momentum conservation in the vacuum, and it coincides with that determined from the atomic four-wave-mixing (aFWM) process. In this work, the pulse energies were one order of magnitude higher than those in the previous search, allowing aFWM from optical elements to be observed as a pressure-independent background for the first time, in addition to the residual-gas-originating aFWM following a quadratic pressure dependence. In principle the four-wave-mixing process in vacuum via ALP exchanges (vFWM) must also be pressure-independent, so the development of a new method for discriminating the optical-element aFWM is indispensable for increasing the pulse energies to the values needed for future upgraded searches. In this paper, we will present the established method for quantifying the yield from the optical-element aFWM process based on the beam cross-section dependence. With the new method, the number of signal photons was found to be consistent with zero. We then successfully obtained a new exclusion region in the relation between ALP-photon coupling, $g/M$, and the ALP mass $m$, reaching the most sensitive point $g/M = 1.14\times10^{-5}\,\mathrm{GeV^{-1}}$ at $m = 0.18\,\mathrm{eV}$.