For those who are interested in doing research with Koichi Hamaguchi as graduate students

(The following content was last updated in March 2025)

Thank you for your interest!

I am a member of the High Energy Physics Theory Group at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo. As of April 2025, the group consists of eight faculty members, two postdocs and 14 graduate students. The interests of the group cover a wide range of topics in particle physics phenomenology and field theory, particle cosmology, and string theory. (See here for the list of members, seminars, recent papers, etc.)

I am interested in physics beyond the Standard Model, and I have been working on phenomenology and particle cosmology. I also try to keep up with the latest results from high-energy experiments and astrophysical observations, and feed them back into theoretical research. (See my homepage for my recent papers, the publication list, etc.) There is also a YouTube video where I talk about some of the background to my research.

In the actual research activities, the students do not always work with their supervisors; many of them, especially Ph.D. students, often collaborate with the other members of the group as well as people outside the group.

If you are interested in applying to join my group, please read the information below and follow the instructions in 4. Application for my group.

1. Graduate Course

Let me first list some points about the graduate course in our department, which may be different from most universities/institutes outside Japan.

It is not common in Japan for students to receive full scholarships from their supervisors or departments. Many faculty members (including myself) do not have grant budgets that can fully support their students. Therefore, students should apply for scholarships on their own, either before or after enrollment. (See here for the list of scholarships.) There are also TA/RA positions, but the salary may not be enough to cover living costs. So far, most of the international students who have joined my research group have done so through the GSGC program.
There are a master's program (usually 2 years) and a doctor program (usually 3 years). Note that you cannot enter the doctor program directly without a master's degree. Most of the doctor students in our High Energy Theory group did their maasters here and then went on to the doctor program. You can think of it as a kind of 5-year PhD program, with a master's thesis and qualification in the middle.
There are not so many lectures in the graduate course. You only need about 10 credits to graduate, and you can do that in one semester. In other words, there is very little coursework and you have a lot of time for research! (and thesis.)
The courses can be found here (see the section on the "Curriculum for the Graduate students" below). As you can see, there are no courses on basic quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, etc., in the graduate course. There are lectures on QFT and particle physics, but they are not sufficient to start research in theoretical particle physics. Students in our group learn QFT and particle physics mostly by reading textbooks, usually together with other students, taking turns to read and explain the books. (Usually one or more faculty members also attend these seminars to help the students.)
The supervisor of each graduate student is determined basically at the time of admission procedures, not after the enrollment. (This is not necessarily the case at other Universities in Japan.)

2. Programs and Scholarships

For the list of Programs and Scholarships, please see this summary page.

3. Application Procedures

There are basically two application procedures, a domestic one (in Japanese), and the admission procedure for international applicants (see here and here).

I assume that you, the readers of this page, are interested in the international application procedure. (For the domestic one, see Q&A below.) As of now, the application process involves the following two steps.

(i) Contact potential supervisors and obtain their approval before submitting an official application --- a pre-selection process before the official application.
(ii) Submit the application documents (GRE, essay, etc…) to the department. The departmental committee will then select qualified students from among all the applicants to the physics department.

Note that the approval in (i) does not guarantee the approval in (ii).
The procedure in (i) depends on the individual faculty members.

4. Application for my group

This year (2025), I have not yet decided whether or not I will be accepting new students through the international admission procedure, nor have I finalized the details of the pre-selection process. If you are interested in applying for my group, please read this page again carefully, indicate the program you are interested in (see here), and send me an email.

Please note that the pre-selection process can take 1-2 months or more, so I recommend contacting potential supervisors well in advance to allow sufficient time for the process.

Please also note that the official application requires you to submit your GRE score, and that the GRE test is held only a few times per year. Check the GRE test dates.

5. Q&A

Q: I have a master's degree. Do you accept students directly from the 3-years doctor program?

A: Normally, I do not accept students directly into the doctoral program unless they have substantial research experience in a field related to my interests, such as having published papers. However, if you have strong research background, feel free to contact me discuss further.

Q: Can I apply through the domestic admission procedure?

A: Yes. However, please note that the domestic admission procedure may be more challenging for international applicants due to several factors, such as (i) the application documents as well as the written exams are written in Japanese, (ii) the applicants have to come to Tokyo in the summer to take the written and oral exams, (iii) (as far as I know) there is no grant/scholarship that starts from the beginning of the master's course, and (iv) the enrollment is in April only.

Q: Do you accept summer internship students (or other short-term program students)?

A: Currently, I do not accept students for summer internships or short-term programs, as it is challenging to make meaningful progress on research projects in such a short timeframe for the topics I am focusing on.

Q: Do you accept Graduate International Research Student ("kenkyusei")?

A: I do not accept Graduate International Research Student ("kenkyusei"). Please note that a "kenkyusei" is not entitled to receive any degree or qualification on completion of the program. And as I wrote above, it is difficult to prepare a short-term project.