London Mathematical Society -- EPSRC Durham Symposium
New moonshines, mock modular forms and string theory
2015-08-03 to 2015-08-12

Schedule of Talks
(Click on title to view abstract.)
Aug 03 (Mon)

14:00 - 17:30 Check-in at Business School

17:30 - 18:30 Welcome Drinks and Posters

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner

Aug 04 (Tue)

08:00 - 09:00 Breakfast

10:00 - 11:00 Tohru Eguchi: Mathieu Moonshine

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15 Robert Wilson: Umbral Groups

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

15:00 - 16:00 Anatoly Libgober: Elliptic Genus and Algebraic Geometry

I will review the role of elliptic genus in study of topological invariants of singular algebraic varieties, McKay correspondence, modular properties of elliptic genus and recent study of elliptic genus of phases of N=2 theories. Several open problems also will be discussed.

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee

16:15 - 17:15 Michael Tuite: Vertex Operator Algebras

In this talk I review some aspects of Monstrous Moonshine and Vertex Operator Algebras (VOAs). I also speculate on possible VOA approaches towards understanding Mathieu Moonshine.

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner

Aug 05 (Wed)

08:00 - 09:00 Breakfast

10:00 - 11:00 Sander Zwegers: Mock Modular Forms

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15 Matthias Gaberdiel: Symmetries of K3 Non-Linear Sigma Models

The classification of the automorphism groups of K3 sigma models is reviewed. In many instances the symmetry group is a subgroup of M24, but there are examples where this is not the case. It is shown that most (if not all) of these exceptional examples are closely related to (cyclic) torus orbifolds. [This is based on joint work with Stefan Hohenegger and Roberto Volpato.]

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

15:00 - 16:00

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee

16:15 - 17:15 Jeff Harvey: Umbral Moonshine

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner

Aug 06 (Thu)

08:00 - 09:00 Breakfast

The heterotic string compactified on T^2 has a large discrete symmetry group SO(2, 18; Z), which acts on the scalars in the theory in a natural way; there have been a number of attempts to construct models in which these scalars are allowed to vary by using SO(2, 18;Z)-invariant functions. In joint work with David Morrison, we give a more complete construction of these models in the special cases in which either there are no Wilson lines – and SO(2, 2;Z) symmetry – or there is a single Wilson line – and SO(2, 3; Z) symmetry. In those cases, the modular forms can be analyzed in detail and there turns out to be a precise theory of K3 surfaces with prescribed singularities which corresponds to the structure of the modular forms. This allows us to construct interesting examples of smooth Calabi-Yau threefolds as elliptic fibrations over Hirzebruch surfaces from pencils of irreducible genus-two curves.

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15 John Duncan: Weight One Jacobi Forms

We will discuss the important role played by weight one Jacobi forms in umbral moonshine.

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

14:15 - 14:30 Group Photo

15:00 - 17:00 Cathedral Visit and Magna Carta

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner

Aug 07 (Fri)

08:00 - 08:15 Breakfast

10:00 - 11:00

In general, it is difficult to calculate the group of automorphisms of a K3 surface. In this talk, I will give a method to calculate it by using Conway's description of a fundamental domain of the reflection group of the even unimodular lattice $II_{1,25}$ of signature $(1,25)$. I will take a generic Jacobian Kummer surface as an example. The main idea of my talk is due to R. Borcherds.

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15

In a joint work with Ben-Zvi and Sczcesny we showed the existence of an N=4 supercon- formal structures on the chiral de Rham complex of a Hyper- ̈ahler manifold in the smooth setting. This was later extended to show that in fact there exists two commuting N=4 structures on such a manifold. I will describe how from these seemingly old results it follows that the cohomology of the holomorphic chiral de Rham of such a manifold carries an N=4 superconformal structure.

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

15:00 - 16:00 Scott Carnahan: Recent Progress in Generalized Moonshine

In 1987, Norton proposed a strengthening of the Monstrous Moonshine conjecture. Among its assertions is the existence of a rule that produces special modular functions called Hauptmoduln from commuting pairs of elements of the monster. The Borcherds-Höhn program proposes a way to obtain such a rule by constructing infinite dimensional Lie algebras attached to elements of the monster. I will describe recent progress in this program.

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee

16:15 - 18:15 Discussion led by Jeff Harvey and Don Zagier

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner

Aug 08 (Sat)

08:00 - 09:00 Breakfast

10:00 - 11:00 Terry Gannon: Shaken but not stirred

We will begin this hour-long treat, with more than you ever wanted to hear on the orbifolds of holomorphic VOAs. Then the Truth about mock modular forms will be revealed. Finally, some steps towards a generalisation of umbral moonshine will be attempted.

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15 Kathrin Bringmann: Polar harmonic Maass forms

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

15:00 - 16:00 Martin Westerholt-Raum: Tensor products of vector valued modular forms

Vector valued modular forms are typically studied as a module over the graded ring of level 1 modular forms. We consider the tensor product of vector valued modular forms and give two applications to congruence representations. First, we represent cusp forms as products of at most two Eisenstein series. Second, we obtain relations of Fourier coefficients of mock modular forms. Additionally, we discuss vector valued Hecke operators.

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee

16:15 - 17:15 Discussion Session

19:00 - 21:00 Banquet

Aug 09 (Sun)

09:00 - 16:00 Excursion to Whitby and Robin Hoods Bay

Aug 10 (Mon)

08:00 - 09:00 Breakfast

10:00 - 11:00 Jens Funke: Cohomological Aspects of Mock Modular Forms

In this talk we give a simple cohomological identity between a weakly holomorphic form and a cusp form both of weight k obtained by applying certain differential operators to a given harmonic Maass form of weight 2-k. We derive several consequences. In particular, we give a cohomological interpretation for the equality of periods of the two weight k forms in question.

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15 Miranda Cheng: Umbral Moonshine and K3 CFT

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

15:00 - 16:00

The Rogers-Ramanujan identities and Monstrous moonshine are important prototypes of results which occur at the interface of number theory, representation theory and physics. The speaker will discuss these identities, and describe recent work with Duncan, Griffin on Warnaar on their recent generalizations. This will include a comprehensive framework of Rogers-Ramanujan identities and singular moduli, and recent work umbral Moonshine.

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee

16:15 - 16:35 LMS Presentation

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner

Aug 11 (Tue)

08:00 - 09:00 Breakfast

10:00 - 11:00 Christoph Keller: The Large N Limit of Permutation Orbifolds

Eventhough holography is relatively well understood in the case of AdS3/CFT2, only very few explicit examples of holographic 2d CFTs are known, most famously symmetric orbifolds. We generalize this construction to orbifolds by arbitrary permutation groups, and discuss which of those theories have holographic properties in the large N limit. We namely investigate their spectrum for Hawking-Page transitions and check if their correlation functions factorize.

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15 Daniel Persson: Fricke S-Duality and BPS-State Counting

I will consider N=4 CHL models obtained from orbifolds of heterotic string theory on T^6 by an order N symmetry. This class of theories exhibit a surprising “Fricke S-duality” acting as S —> -1/(NS) on the axio-dilaton modulus S. This is a novel symmetry that lies outside of the SL(2,Z)-symmetry of the parent theory. I will demonstrate that the counting of 1/2 BPS-states is invariant under Fricke S-duality and show how this connects to Mathieu moonshine. This is joint work with R. Volpato.

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

15:00 - 16:00 Discussion led by Terry Gannon

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee

16:15 - 17:15 Discussion Session

17:00 - 18:00 Wine and Cheese

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner

Aug 12 (Wed)

08:00 - 09:00 Breakfast

10:00 - 11:00 Roberto Volpato: Monstrous Heterosis

We propose a physical interpretation of the Monstrous Moonshine observations in terms of certain heterotic string compactifications based on the Frenkel-Lepowsky-Meurman Monstrous module.

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:15 Shamit Kachru: Super-moonshine and BPS states on K3

I discuss a surprising relationship between the enumerative geometry of K3 surfaces, and the c=12 moonshine module recently investigated in connection with mock modular moonshine for the groups $M_{22}, M_{23}$ and $M_{24}$. The partition functions capturing curve counts on K3 -- the Yau-Zaslow, KKV, and KKP invariants -- can be recast as traces with appropriate insertions in the moonshine module. This allows us to make predictions for large classes of new, twined (or `equivariant') BPS invariants of K3.

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

15:00 - 16:00 Discussion Session

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee

19:00 - 20:30 Dinner