Quantum field theory of axion-photon mixing and vacuum polarization

We report on recent results obtained by analyzing axion–photon mixing in the framework of quantum field theory. We obtain corrections to the oscillation formulae and we reveal a new effect of the vacuum polarization due to the non-zero value of the vacuum energy for the component of the photon polarization mixed with the axion. The study of axion–photon mixing in curved space is also presented. Numerical analysis show that some quantum field theory effect of axion–photon mixing, in principle, could be detected experimentally.