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