High Energy Physics

Subfactors and VOAs should both describe CFT, but what is relatively easy in one formulation can be very difficult in the other. In my talk I'll describe lessons the VOA world can learn from the subfactor one.

I will talk about the recent progress on the classification of (strongly regular) holomorphic vertex operator algebras of central charge 24. In particular, I will discuss a construction of certain holomorphic vertex operator algebras of central charge 24 using orbifold construction associated to inner automorphisms. This talk is based on a joint work with Hiroki Shimakura.

Modular invariance plays an important role in AdS3/CFT2 holography. I discuss the structure of non-holomorphic CFT partition functions, namely in what sense the light spectrum determines the heavy spectrum and how to construct example partition functions using Poincare series. This yields necessary conditions on the spectrum of holographic CFTs. Finally I will discuss permutation orbifolds as examples of such theories.

The elliptic genus of K3 and its decomposition into characters of the N=4 superconformal algebra of associated conformal field theories can be viewed as the outset of Mathieu Moonshine. Thus, extended supersymmetry induces additional properties of the elliptic genus, which so far lack a satisfactory geometric interpretation. We investigate the implications of this decomposition on geometric structures that underlie the elliptic genus.

We consider dual pairs of four dimensional heterotic/type IIA CHL models with 16 space-time supersymmetries. We provide strong evidence for the existence of an S-duality acting on the heterotic axion-dilaton by a Fricke involution S --> -1/NS, where N is the order of the orbifold symmetry. While most models are self-dual, in some cases S-duality relates the CHL model to a compactification of type IIA on an orbifold of T^6. We provide a simple criterion to determine whether a model is self-dual or not. Finally, we argue that in self-dual CHL models the lattices of electric and magnetic charges must be N-modular and verify this prediction.