English

Counterexamples to Zagier's Duality Conjecture on Nahm Sums

Number Theory 2025-01-15 v4 Combinatorics

Abstract

Given any positive integer rr, Nahm's problem is to determine all r×rr\times r rational positive definite matrix AA, rr-dimensional rational vector BB and rational scalar CC such that the rank rr Nahm sum associated with (A,B,C)(A,B,C) is modular. Around 2007, Zagier conjectured that if the rank rr Nahm sum for (A,B,C)(A,B,C) is modular, then so is the dual Nahm sum associated with (A1,A1B,BTA1B/2r/24C)(A^{-1},A^{-1}B,B^\mathrm{T} A^{-1}B/2-{r}/{24}-C). We construct some explicit rank four Nahm sums which are modular while their duals are not modular. This provides counterexamples to Zagier's duality conjecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.09701,
  title  = {Counterexamples to Zagier's Duality Conjecture on Nahm Sums},
  author = {Liuquan Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.09701},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Comments are welcome. This is a simplified version. The main changes from v3 are as follows: We deleted the first identity from Theorem 1.3 since it does not serve as counterexamples. We also remove the last section "Concluding Remarks" for the same reason

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:00:19.937Z