Related papers: Snowmass White Paper: Moonshine
We present five open problems in the theory of vertex rings. They cover a variety of different areas of research where vertex rings have been, or are threatening to be, relevant. They have also been chosen because I personally find them…
The phrase "more is different" is often used to refer to the new, unexpected collective phenomena that can arise when the number of states in a given system is large. In this contribution to the Snowmass 2021 Study, we describe 13…
We review recent progress and a number of future directions for applications of effective field theory methods to condensed matter systems broadly defined. Our emphasis is on areas that have allowed a fertile exchange of ideas between high…
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…
We consider the application of permutation orbifold constructions towards a new possible understanding of the genus zero property in Monstrous and Generalized Moonshine. We describe a theory of twisted Hecke operators in this setting and…
We present new deep near-infrared images of dark clouds in the Perseus molecular complex. These images show beautiful extended emission which we model as scattered ambient starlight and name ``cloudshine''. The brightness and color…
We give an overview of the status of string cosmology. We explain the motivation for the subject, outline the main problems, and assess some of the proposed solutions. Our focus is on those aspects of cosmology that benefit from the…
We review recent progress and future prospects for harnessing powerful tools from theoretical high-energy physics, such as scattering amplitudes and effective field theory, to develop a precise and systematically improvable framework for…
We review recent progress in our understanding of the physics of black holes. In particular, we discuss the ideas from string theory that explain the entropy of black holes from a counting of microstates of the hole, and the related…
We review the existence, formation and properties of cosmic strings in string theory, the wide variety of observational techniques that are being employed to detect them, and the constraints that current observations impose on string theory…
String theory provides an example of the kind of apparent inconsistency that the {\it Principle of Black Hole Complementarity\/} deals with. To a freely infalling observer a string falling through a black hole horizon appears to be a Planck…
Even when completely and consistently formulated, a fundamental theory of physics and cosmological boundary conditions may not give unambiguous and unique predictions for the universe we observe; indeed inflation, string/M theory, and…
Solutions to low energy string theory describing black holes and black strings are reviewed. Many of these solutions can be obtained by applying simple solution generating transformations to the Schwarzschild metric. In a few cases, the…
We provide a physics derivation of Monstrous moonshine. We show that the McKay-Thompson series $T_g$, $g\in \mathbb{M}$, can be interpreted as supersymmetric indices counting spacetime BPS-states in certain heterotic string models. The…
I review aspects of string theory on plane wave backgrounds emphasising the connection to gauge theory given by the BMN correspondence. Topics covered include the Penrose limit and its role in deriving the BMN duality from AdS/CFT,…
We propose a new method for identifying new physics imprints on present observational data in cosmology whereby signatures of string theory are clearly distinguished from imprints of possible features on the inflaton potential. Our method…
The past year has seen enormous progress in string theory. It has become clear that all of the different string theories are different limits of a single theory. Moreover, in certain limits, one obtains a new, eleven-dimensional structure…
Using standard methods from string theory, this paper presents a comprehensive survey about the most important aspects of the theory of sand. Special interest is put on the examination of the sand-wind duality and the interaction of…
Recent astrophysical observations, pertaining to either high-redshift supernovae or cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations, as those measured recently by the WMAP satellite, provide us with data of unprecedented accuracy,…
The theory of quadratic forms and class numbers has connections to many classical problems in number theory. Recently, class numbers have appeared in the study of black holes in string theory. We describe this connection and raise questions…