Dear colleagues in EP,

I hope this message finds you all well. The skiing season nears its end and spring is coming. This is also the time when the accelerators and experiments at CERN get ready to start the data-taking period for the year. The excitement and expectations are large, especially following the record-breaking year of 2024.

While I am sure you are all super busy with the preparations for the run, the analyses of the data already taken, the construction for the detector upgrades for LS3 or the support for these and other activities, I still hope you find some time to read the articles of this newsletter, which again reflects the large variety of activities in our department. Two articles describe exciting new physics observations and measurements. The LHCb collaboration has recently presented the first observation of direct CP violation in baryons. This is a milestone in our understanding of the matter anti-matter asymmetry in the universe. Second, as presented at the end of last year, is an article about the precise W boson measurement by CMS. More ideas are developed to hunt for dark matter. NA64 is proposing the use of a low-energy positron beam. and there is also a very interesting proposal to use the protoDUNE detectors in the North Area to search for light, weakly interacting, beyond Standard Model particles. Two articles in this newsletter describe these ideas and proposals. Two more articles cover activities at the antimatter factory: a review of the history of antimatter studies at CERN and the installation of a new optical fibre link between CERN and the French National Metrological Institute in Paris to help the frequency comparisons between matter and antimatter.

There are further articles on electronics, computing, detectors and the new EP R&D work package on Data Acquisition for the future. I'll stop here and let you read the first EP newsletter of 2025. Enjoy!

With best regards,

Manfred Krammer.