A Borcherds–Kac–Moody Superalgebra with Conway Symmetry
Abstract
We construct a Borcherds–Kac–Moody (BKM) superalgebra on which the Conway group Co0Co0acts faithfully. We show that the BKM algebra is generated by the physical states (BRST cohomology classes) in a chiral superstring theory. We use this construction to produce denominator identities for the chiral partition functions of the Conway module Vs♮, a supersymmetric c=12 chiral conformal field theory whose (twisted) partition functions enjoy moonshine properties and which has automorphism group isomorphic to Co0. In particular, these functions satisfy a genus zero property analogous to that of monstrous moonshine. Finally, we suggest how one may promote the denominators to spacetime BPS indices in type II string theory, which might thus furnish a physical explanation of the genus zero property of Conway moonshine.
Additional Information
© 2019 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. Received: 22 May 2018; Accepted: 11 June 2019; First Online: 23 July 2019. We thank S. Carnahan, J. Duncan, D. Persson, N. Scheithauer and T. Wrase for useful comments and discussions. We are especially grateful to J. Duncan for helpful comments on an earlier version of the draft. S.H. is supported by the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs program. N.P. is supported by a Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Fellowship. R.V. is supported by a grant from 'Programma per giovani ricercatori Rita Levi Montalcini'. The authors acknowledge support from the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by National Science Foundation grant PHY-1607611. N.P. gratefully acknowledges the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics for hospitality and support during the final stages of this work. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0011632.Attached Files
Published - Harrison2019_Article_ABorcherdsKacMoodySuperalgebra.pdf
Submitted - 1803.10798.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 97355
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190723-105653746
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canada Research Chairs Program
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- Programma per giovani ricercatori Rita Levi Montalcini
- PHY-1607611
- NSF
- DE-SC0011632
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- Created
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2019-07-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics