José Adolfo de Azcárraga

has a physics degree (1963) by the  Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Ph. D., also in pysics, by Barcelona University (1968),  obtained with the help of a prize by the Fundación Juan March. He has realized numerous stays abroad, in special half a dozen of years in Cambridge and Oxford universities, as well as shorter stays in other european and american universities and research centres. Since1978 he is theoretical physics professor in Valencia university (at present emeritus) and a member of IFIC; before he belonged to Barcelona and Salamanca universities.

Alongside his teaching academic duties, he has developed an intense scientifc career, having been Principal Researcher of numeorus research competitive projects, both national and european. He has also had various academic responsabilities. In particular, he was a member of the Experts Commission created by the Spanish Ministry of Education that issued (12-feb-2013) a Report to improve the Spanish University System (Propuestas para la Reforma y mejora de la calidad y eficiencia del Sistema Universitario Español), that can be found in the general articles section of http://www.j.a.de.azcarraga.es or in https://www.uv.es/~azcarrag/ (see articles 36 and 37). He has been president (2013-2021) of the Spanish Royal Pysics Society  (Real Sociedad Española de Física, RSEF). He is a member of the Real Colegio Libre de Eméritos.

Prof. Azcárraga has frequently expressed his concern fot the quality of the teahing in Spain, and has written extensively about this subject. His last paper on this problem can be found in the general articles secion of http://www.j.a.de.azcarraga.es or https://www.uv.es/~azcarrag/ with the number 77b, The new Spanish educational legislation: why public education will not improve, Revista Española de Pedagogía 281 (enero-abril 2022), págs. 111-129. 

He has also been concerned about closing the gap between science and society. Alongside his career, he has delivered countless talks for the general public, on sience in general, on physics or on the theory of evolution and its implications. In 1905 he received the Special Prize Año Mundial de la Física granted by the RSEF, the  Spanish Royal Mathematics Society and la Fundación Española de Ciencia y Tecnología for his book  En torno a Albert Einstein, su ciencia y su tiempo (published by Valencia University, 2nd ed., 2006).

He has also artistic interests: with the sponsorship of the Valencia Town Hall, he helped to creatae the Sala de Arte Adolfo de Azcárraga of the Museo de la Ciudad, mostly devoted to Valencian paintings of the twentieth century. More details can be found  in http://www.j.a.de.azcarraga.es .

[Biography, english version]

Graduated in Physics from the University of Valencia (UV) in June 1978 (second national prize in physics and special honors degree in 1979). Ph.D. in Physics from UV in March 1983, supervised by Prof. José Bernabeu with a thesis entitled "Analysis of the Structure of Charged and Neutral Currents from Nuclear Semileptonic Processes". Having been Research Fellow, Assistant Professor and Acting Associate Professor at UV, I got a Fulbright-MEC fellowship and I joined the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), as a postdoctoral fellow two years until late 1986. In 1987 I joined the Department of Theoretical Physics of UV as Associate Professor in Theoretical Physics, and almost simultaneously I become member of Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), a Joint Center of CSIC and UV. Since April 2010 I am Professor (Catedrático) of Theoretical Physics at UV. I have made long stays at the University of Davis (California), again at BNL New York, in the INT of Seattle, and during several years at the IST in Lisbon and at CERN.

I have been Deputy Director of IFIC from 1991 to 1998, ERASMUS coordinator of Physics at U. Valencia from 2002 to 2007 and director of IFIC from May 2007 to July 2015, during this period IFIC was awarded the famous “Severo Ochoa Execelence Grant”.

I have been Principal Investigator (PI) of the theory research projects "Fundamental Interactions and its Experimental Implications" since 2002, funded by MEC, MICINN and MINECO in their FPA2002-00612 (202.600€), FPA2005-01678 (385.560€), FPA2008-02878 (487.388€) and FPA2011-23596 (450.120€) versions of the National Plan for Particle Physics from 2003 till 2015.

In 2010, at IFIC, with my experimental colleagues from Babar Fernando Martinez-Vidal and Arantza Oyanguren, we joined efforts in order to promote IFIC participation at LHCb. Mainly for this purpose I have been PI of the excellence PROMETEO projects, funded by Generalitat Valenciana: GVPROMETEO2010-056 (274.620€), GVPROMETEOII2014-049 (284.150€), PROMETEO/2019/113 (213.065€) and CIPROM/2022/36 (600.000€) from 2010 till 2025.

I have supervised six doctoral theses: i) “CP violation in Particle” by J. Roldán (1991), ii) “The neutrino-electron collision: a test of the neutrino properties” by J. Segura (1994), iii) “Neutral and charged current couplings at high luminosity meson factories” by O. Vives (1997), iv) “CP violation and New Physics in B mesons” by M. Nebot (2005) and v) “Taming Flavor in Two Higgs Doublet Models” by F. Cornet-Gómez (2021), vi) “Flavor, Higgses and CP Violation” by Carlos Miró (2025). Now I am co-supervising one doctoral students J. F. Bastos at CFTP from IST in Lisbon.

My fields of expertise are in Theoretical Particle Physics: The Standard Model and Beyond, but especially Flavour Physics, CP violation, Higgs Physics and Neutrino Physics.

I have collaborated at BNL with Ling-Lie Chau, C.S. Lim and W. Marciano in CP Violation, Rare decays and in Radiative Corrections to the Neutrino Refractive Index in a dense neutral astrophysical medium. Roldan’s thesis had impact on the construction of the Frascaty Phi factory; we also study, for the first time, self-energy diagrams to generate Baryon Asymmetry in the Universe (BAU) -this mechanism was later rescued for leptogenesis-. In J. Segura’s thesis we had the distinguished collaboration of the late Samoil Bilenky. In the thesis of Vives, we assess the impact of B factories in FCNC processes and its consequences for heavy vector-like fermions. During this period a -still ongoing- collaboration started with Lisbon Branco’s group including Rebelo and Silva-Marcos.

In this Lisbon-Valencia collaboration we have produced relevant contributions related to Model Independent extraction of the complex CKM matrix from B data, and therefore assessing the complexity of CKM even in the presence of New Physics. Also, we have released Invariant formulations under Flavour symmetries of CP violating quantities. These last two topics where mainly developed in Miguel Nebot thesis. The collaboration has evolved towards Phenomenology of two Higgs doublet models including Flavour Changing Higgs couplings, Minimal Flavour Violation and Spontaneous CP violation. Some of these topics appear in Cornet-Gómez thesis. Also, with J. P. Silva, sometime ago we released an invariant formulation of multi-Higgs models including the quark and the scalar sector, this collaboration has included also David London and S. Baek at Montreal. More recently we are collaborating in Phenomenology of Models with singlet vector-like quarks in J. F. Bastos thesis.

With J. Bernabéu we have been taking advantage of the initial entangled states at a B factory to generalize the Babar measurement of T violation to arbitrary decay channel, study CPT violating effects and proposing new ways of measuring the CP violating phase gamma. With the Valencia LHCb team I have been collaborating on the study of EDM and MDM of heavy fermions at LHCb. More recently we are studying the evolution of the polarization in the decay chains of heavy baryons.

Some numbers:

“Sexenios”: 6. (Last awarded in July 2015)

Thesis (last 5 years): 2 (1 in progress). In total 6 (7).

Total Number Citations: 1.794 (*). From inSpire (5377,2417)

Citations in last 5 years: 495(*)

Number of types Q1 papers: 58.

Index h=24 (*). From inSpire (30,29)

(*) Data from Scopus in 2025

Most cited recent papers (# Scopus, # inSpire)

Muon and electron g- 2 anomalies in a flavor conserving 2HDM with an oblique view on the CDF MW value. Eur.Phys.J.C 82 (2022) 915. With F. Cornet-Gómez, Carlos Miro and M. Nebot. (28,49)

Electron and muon g−2 anomalies in general flavour conserving two Higgs doublets models. Phys.Rev.D 102 (2020) 3, 035023. W/ F. Cornet-Gómez and M. Nebot. (51,61)

Vacuum Induced CP Violation Generating a Complex CKM Matrix with Controlled Scalar FCNC. Eur.Phys.J.C 79 (2019) 8, 711. W/ Miguel Nebot and Gustavo C. Branco. (18,23)

Flavor conservation in two-Higgs-doublet models. Phys.Rev.D 98 (2018) 3, 035046. W/ F. Cornet-Gómez and M. Nebot. (24,36)

Controlled Flavour Changing Neutral Couplings in Two Higgs Doublet Models. Eur.Phys.J.C 77 (2017) 9, 585. W/ J. M. Alves, G. C. Branco, F. Cornet-Gomez and M. Nebot. (22,29)

On the search for the electric dipole moment of strange and charm baryons at LHC. Eur.Phys.J. C77 (2017) 3, 181. W/ L.M. Garcia Martin, D. Marangotto, F. Martinez Vidal, A. Merli, N. Neri, A. Oyanguren and J. Ruiz Vidal. (49,84)

Handbook of LHC Higgs Cross Sections: 4. Deciphering the Nature of the Higgs Sector. DOI: 10.23731/CYRM-2017-002. W/ LHC Higgs Cross Section Working Group (D. de Florian et al.). (-,2673)

Other most cited papers

Jarlskog-like invariants for theories with scalars and fermions. Phys.Rev. D51,3870,1995. W/ Joao P. Silva. (241, 291)

Anticipating the higher generations of quarks from rephasing invariance of the mixing matrix. Phys.Lett. B168,97,1986. W/ Ling-Lie Chau. (122, 169)

Radiative corrections to neutrino indices of refraction. Phys.Rev. D35,896,1987. W/ C-S. Lim and W.J. Marciano. (111,138)

Flavour-changing Higgs couplings in a class of two Higgs doublet models. Eur.Phys.J. C76 (2016) no.3, 161. W/ G.C. Branco, M. Nebot and M.N. Rebelo. (101,132)

Minimal flavour violation and multi-Higgs models. Phys.Lett. B687:194-200,2010. W/ G.C. Branco y M.N. Rebelo. (83,101)

Lectures and Presentations

IDPASC School. Udine 2012.

Workshop on Multi-Higgs Models. Lisbon 2012, 2022, 2024.

Seminar at U. of Warsaw. 2013.

Summer School and Workshop on the Standard Model and Beyond. Corfu 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023.

Workshop: TeV-scale Physics after the Discovery of the Higgs Particle. TWCU. Tokyo 2014.

Scalars 2015. Warsow

DISCRETE: Fourth Symposium on prospects in the Physics of Discrete Symmetries. King's College London (2012) and Baden-Baden (2022).