Status of the ALPS Experiment

The ALPS experiment at DESY searches for light particles which are coupling very weakly to photons. Primary physics goal is the search for axion like particles in a photon regeneration experiment. Central part of the experimental setup is a five Tesla strong superconducting HERA dipole magnet. During two operation periods in the years 2007 and 2008 we have collected first data and explored the sensitivity of the setup. A Fabry Perot laser cavity is being set up in order to increase the sensitivity by more than one order of magnitude.