Electrodynamics in the presence of an axion

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.