First results of axion dark matter search with DANCE

Axions are one of the well-motivated candidates for dark matter, originally proposed to solve the strong C P problem in particle physics. Dark matter Axion search with riNg Cavity Experiment (DANCE) is a new experimental project to broadly search for axion dark matter in the mass range of 10^-17 eV <m_a<10^-11 eV . We aim to detect the rotational oscillation of linearly polarized light caused by the axion-photon coupling with a bow-tie cavity. The first results of the prototype experiment, DANCE Act-1, are reported from a 24-hour observation. We found no evidence for axions and set 95% confidence level upper limit on the axion-photon coupling g_{a γ γ}≲8 ×10^-4 GeV^-1 in 10^-14 eV <m_a<10^-13 eV . Although the bound did not exceed the current best limits, this optical cavity experiment is the first demonstration of polarization-based axion dark matter search without any external magnetic field.