Related papers: TASI Lectures on Moonshine
We present a brief overview of Moonshine with an emphasis on connections to physics. Moonshine collectively refers to a set of phenomena connecting group theory, analytic number theory, and vertex operator algebras or conformal field…
These notes provide an elementary (and incomplete) sketch of the objects and ideas involved in monstrous and umbral moonshine. They were the basis for a plenary lecture at the 18th International Congress on Mathematical Physics, and for a…
This article is a short and elementary introduction to the monstrous moonshine aiming to be as accessible as possible. I first review the classification of finite simple groups out of which the monster naturally arises, and features of the…
As Mathieu moonshine is a special case of umbral moonshine, Thompson moonshine (in half-integral weight) is a special case of a family of similar relationships between finite groups and vector-valued modular forms of a certain kind. We call…
Motivated by the appearance of penumbral moonshine, and by evidence that penumbral moonshine enjoys an extensive relationship to generalized monstrous moonshine via infinite products, we establish a general construction in this work which…
These lectures discuss some of the general issues in developing a phenomenology for Superstring Theory/M Theory. The focus is on the question: how might one obtain robust, generic predictions. For example, does the theory predict low energy…
The study of black holes in string theory has led to the discovery of deep and surprising connections between black holes and modular forms -- which are two classical, a priori unrelated, subjects. This article explains the main physical…
Monstrous moonshine relates distinguished modular functions to the representation theory of the monster. The celebrated observations that 196884=1+196883 and 21493760=1+196883+21296876, etc., illustrate the case of the modular function…
In these notes, based on lectures given in Istanbul, we give an introduction both to Monstrous Moonshine and to the classification of rational conformal field theories, using this as an excuse to explore several related structures and go on…
Twenty-five years ago, Conway and Norton published their remarkable paper `Monstrous Moonshine', proposing a completely unexpected relationship between finite simple groups and modular functions. This paper reviews the progress made in…
In earlier work we initiated a program to study relationships between finite groups and arithmetic geometric invariants of modular curves in a systematic way. In the present work we continue this program, with a focus on the two smallest…
We describe a relationship between the representation theory of the Thompson sporadic group and a weakly holomorphic modular form of weight one-half that appears in work of Borcherds and Zagier on Borcherds products and traces of singular…
In recent literature, moonshine has been explored for some groups beyond the Monster, for example the sporadic O'Nan and Thompson groups. This collection of examples may suggest that moonshine is a rare phenomenon, but a fundamental and…
The goal of these lectures is to present an informal but precise introduction to a body of concepts and methods of interest in number theory and string theory revolving around modular forms and their generalizations. Modular invariance lies…
In this paper we address the following two closely related questions. First, we complete the classification of finite symmetry groups of type IIA string theory on $K3\times \mathbb R^6$, where Niemeier lattices play an important role. This…
The classical theory of monstrous moonshine describes the unexpected connection between the representation theory of the monster group $M$, the largest of the simple sporadic groups, and certain modular functions, called Hauptmodln. In…
Umbral moonshine describes an unexpected relation between 23 finite groups arising from lattice symmetries and special mock modular forms. It includes the Mathieu moonshine as a special case and can itself be viewed as an example of the…
This lecture surveys a few loosely related topics, ranging from the scarcity of quantum field theories -- and the role that this has played, and still plays, in physics -- to paradoxes involving black holes in soluble two dimensional string…
We consider the relationship between the conjectured uniqueness of the Moonshine Module, ${\cal V}^\natural$, and Monstrous Moonshine, the genus zero property of the modular invariance group for each Monster group Thompson series. We first…
In these lecture proceedings, we describe some of the fundamental mathematical concepts that underlie supersymmetric string theory and field theory, and their role in describing and testing dualities. In particular, we provide a pedagogical…