Electrodynamics in the presence of an axion

Abstract

The low energy limit of an axion field coupled to gauge fields is investigated through the behaviour of the gauge field propagator in a local vaccum angle background. The local (singular) part of the effective action for the axion field is calculated at one loop level. In the case of a timelike, linearly growing axion field, representing a massive axion, we give an asymptotic expansion of the causal propagator and we solve nonlocally for the first coefficient. We show that, for a generic axionic background, short distance propagation of the gauge fields is well defined.