Sensitivity of EDM experiments in paramagnetic atoms and molecules to hadronic CP violation

2020

Experiments searching for the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the electron $d_e$ utilise atomic/molecular states with one or more uncompensated electron spins, and these paramagnetic systems have recently achieved remarkable sensitivity to $d_e$. If the source of $CP$ violation resides entirely in the hadronic sector, the two-photon exchange processes between electrons and the nucleus induce $CP$-odd semileptonic interactions, parametrised by the Wilson coefficient $C_{SP}$, and provide the dominant source of EDMs in paramagnetic systems instead of $d_e$. We evaluate the $C_{SP}$ coefficients induced by the leading hadronic sources of $CP$ violation, namely nucleon EDMs and $CP$-odd pion-nu…