English

CFTs with Large Gap from Barnes-Wall Lattice Orbifolds

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-03-18 v2 Quantum Algebra

Abstract

We investigate orbifolds of lattice conformal field theories with the goal of constructing theories with large gap. We consider Barnes-Wall lattices, which are a family of lattices with no short vectors, and orbifold by an extraspecial 2-group of lattice automorphisms. To construct the orbifold CFT, we investigate the orbifold vertex operator algebra and its twisted modules. To obtain a holomorphic CFT, a certain anomaly 3-cocycle ω\omega needs to vanish; based on evidence we provide, we conjecture that it indeed does. Granting this conjecture, we construct a holomorphic CFT of central charge 128 with gap 4.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.13646,
  title  = {CFTs with Large Gap from Barnes-Wall Lattice Orbifolds},
  author = {Christoph A. Keller and Ashley Winter Roberts and Jeremy Roberts},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.13646},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

27 pages. Ancillary Mathematica and Magma files. v2: Added a conclusion section describing properties of the constructed CFT, corrected typos