Limits on $CP$-violating hadronic interactions and proton EDM from paramagnetic molecules

Abstract: Experiments with paramagnetic ground or metastable excited states of molecules (ThO, HfF$^+$, YbF, YbOH, BaF, PbO, etc.) provide strong constraints on electron electric dipole moment (EDM) and coupling constant $C_{SP}$ of contact semileptonic interaction. We compute new contributions to $C_{SP}$ arising from the nucleon EDMs due to combined electric and magnetic electron-nucleon interaction. This allows us to improve limits from the experiments with paramagnetic molecules on the $CP$-violating parameters, such as the proton EDM, $|d_p|< 1.1\times 10^{-23} e\cdot $cm, the QCD vacuum angle, $|\bar \theta|<1.4\times 10^{-8}$, as well as the quark chromo-EDMs and $\pi$-meson-nucleon couplings. Our results may also be used to search for the axion dark matter which produces oscillating $\bar\theta$.