Search for photon oscillations into massive particles

In this paper, we present the final results of our experiment on photon-axion oscillations in the presence of a magnetic field, which took place at LULI (Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses, Palaiseau, France). Our null measurement allowed us to exclude the existence of axions with inverse coupling constant $M>9.\times 10^5$ GeV for low axion masses and to improve the preceding BFRT limits by a factor 3 or more for axion masses $1.1 {meV} <m_a<2.6 {meV}$. We also show that our experimental results improve the existing limits on the parameters of a low mass hidden-sector boson usually dubbed "paraphoton" because of its similarity with the usual photon.