Francisco Borges Zapata

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT FRANCISCO BORGES ZAPATA

I like to tackle various problems with the help of a diverse set of mathematical tools, intuition, and the diverse experience of my collaborators, whom I am always keen to learn from. As a theoretical physicist, I strive to extrapolate these aptitudes to other disciplines, from leisure activities to other research fields outside the bubble of theoretical physics, or anything I become interested in learning.I obtained my PhD in physics from McMaster University, working under the supervision of Prof. Sung-Sik Lee. My research is in quantum criticality, non-Fermi liquids, and magnetic impurities in metals. Specifically, my work involves the non-Fermi liquid state that arises at the onset of antiferromagnetic quantum phase transitions in two-dimensions. My research has led to results such as the development of a systematic description of non-Fermi liquids via field-theoretic and functional renormalization group techniques, how these systems achieve superconductivity, the description of the non-monotonic behavior of the cyclotron physics of electrons with respect to the interaction strength with their collective degrees of freedom, and the suppression of the Kondo screening due to the competition of the same strong collective modes and the electron scattering with magnetic impurities. I achieved these results through collaborative and individual research, which could lead to a better understanding of the properties of certain classes of high-temperature superconductors. In the past, I have also worked on combinatorial aspects of scattering amplitudes in high-energy theory.I defended my PhD thesis on August 13th, 2025.