Turning on The Any Light Particle Search II Experiment

The Any Light Particle Search II (ALPS II) is a light shining through a wall experiment located at DESY. The experiment consists of two 120 m strings of straightened 5.3 T HERA dipoles separated by an opaque wall and containing high-finesse optical cavities. Axions or axion-like particles that are generated by photons in the production optical cavity pass through the wall into the regeneration optical cavity where some will regenerate photons identical to those in the production cavity. The regenerated photons will be detected with a heterodyne readout scheme during the initial configuration after which the experiment will be reconfigured to use a transition-edge single-photon detector. During 2022, much progress was made commissioning the experiment, and an initial science run is planned for 1st quarter 2023. We report on the status of the experiment, the initial science data, and the outlook for 2023 and beyond.