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The KEK Theory Meeting on Particle Phenomenology 2025 (KEK-PH2025winter) was held from February 18 to 21, 2025 at the KEK Tsukuba Campus. This annual meeting has a history of over 20 years and attracts many participants from overseas. This year, more than 100 researchers, mainly early-career scientists, attended and delivered numerous presentations.

 

 

This year’s meeting was packed with exciting topics. It began with reports on physics that can be explored by the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a large-scale experiment planned at CERN in Europe. At the same time, steady experimental results and future prospects were discussed, including the LHC experiment, Belle II experiment, dark matter searches, and cosmic microwave background observations. There was even a surprising presentation suggesting the possibility of a new fundamental principle in particle theory that minimizes quantum entanglement created by particle scattering.

The world of particle physics and the universe is full of mysteries. In addition to thoroughly investigating elementary particles and carefully observing the universe, theoretical studies help us understand how particles shape the universe and how they were created throughout cosmic history. By ensuring consistency between these perspectives, we gain powerful methodologies for solving fundamental mysteries. For example, if dark matter in the universe consists of a certain unknown particle, its properties can be compared with cosmic observation data to infer how it was produced in the early universe, as well as its mass and interaction strength. Building on these findings, observation strategies on Earth can be designed and implemented to test them—an effort in which humanity takes on the grand puzzle connecting particle physics and the universe.

This meeting brought together dedicated researchers who engaged in theoretical discussions and experimental proposals in pursuit of the true underlying theory. With a large number of applications from young researchers to give a talk, the meeting demonstrated the growing enthusiasm for particle phenomenology.