Limits on CP-odd four-fermion operators containing the strange quark field- art. no. 036003.

The bounds on the neutron electric dipole moment and T-odd nucleon-nucleon interaction are used to extract the limits on the effective CP-odd four-fer mion operators containing a strange quark field. This completes the study o f the dim = 5,6 CP-odd operators bu.ilt from light-quark fields. The limits are very strong and comparable to those obtained previously for operators containing up and down flavors. We also analyze the shift of the axionic va cuum, theta(eff), induced by four-fermion operators in the presence of the PQ mechanism and conclude that this gives subleading contributions to CP-od d observables as compared with the direct ones. [S0556-2821(99)07813-3].