Lattice QCD spectroscopy for hadronic CP violation

Abstract: The interpretation of nuclear electric dipole moment (EDM) experiments is clouded by large theoretical uncertainties associated with nonperturbative matrix elements. In various beyond-the-Standard Model scenarios nuclear and diamagnetic atomic EDMs are expected to be dominated by CP-violating pion-nucleon interactions that arise from quark chromo-electric dipole moments. The corresponding CP-violating pion-nucleon coupling strengths are, however, poorly known. In this work we propose a strategy to calculate these couplings by using spectroscopic lattice QCD techniques. Instead of directly calculating the pion-nucleon coupling constants, a challenging task, we use chiral symmetry relations that link the pion-nucleon couplings to nucleon sigma terms and mass splittings that are significantly easier to calculate. In this work, we show that these relations are reliable up to next-to-next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion in both SU(2) and SU(3) chiral perturbation theory. We conclude with a brief discussion about practical details regarding the required lattice QCD calculations and the phenomenological impact of an improved understanding of CP-violating matrix elements.