Direct and indirect constraints on CP-violating Higgs-quark and Higgs-gluon interactions

Abstract: We investigate direct and indirect constraints on the complete set of anomalous CP-violating Higgs couplings to quarks and gluons originating from dimension-6 operators, by studying their signatures at the LHC and in electric dipole moments (EDMs). We show that existing uncertainties in hadronic and nuclear matrix elements have a significant impact on the interpretation of EDM experiments, and we quantify the improvements needed to fully exploit the power of EDM searches. Currently, the best bounds on the anomalous CP-violating Higgs interactions come from a combination of EDM measurements and the data from LHC Run 1. We argue that Higgs production cross section and branching ratios measurements at the LHC Run 2 will not improve the constraints significantly. On the other hand, the bounds on the couplings scale roughly linearly with EDM limits, so that future theoretical and experimental EDM developments can have a major impact in pinning down interactions of the Higgs.