Upper limits for the photoproduction cross section for the Φ−− (1860) pentaquark state off the deuteron

We searched for the {Phi}{sup --}(1860) pentaquark in the photoproduction process off the deuteron in the {Xi}{sup -} {pi}{sup -} decay channel using CLAS. The invariant mass spectrum of the {Xi}{sup -} {pi}{sup -} system does not indicate any statistically significant enhancement near the reported mass M = 1.860 GeV. The statistical analysis of the sideband-subtracted mass spectrum yields a 90% confidence level upper limit of 0.7 nb for the photoproduction cross section of {Phi}{sup --}(1860) with a consecutive decay into {Xi}{sup -} {pi}{sup -} in the photon energy range 4.5 GeV < E{sub {gamma}} < 5.5 GeV.