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Beauty and the beast: Superconformal symmetry in a monster module

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Frenkel, Lepowsky, and Meurman have constructed a representation of the largest sporadic simple finite group, the Fischer-Griess monster, as the automorphism group of the operator product algebra of a conformal field theory with central chargec=24. In string terminology, their construction corresponds to compactification on aZ 2 asymmetric orbifold constructed from the torusR 24/∧, where ∧ is the Leech lattice. In this note we point out that their construction naturally embodies as well a larger algebraic structure, namely a super-Virasoro algebra with central chargeĉ=16, with the supersymmetry generator constructed in terms of bosonic twist fields.

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Communicated by L. Alvarez-Gaumé

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Dixon, L., Ginsparg, P. & Harvey, J. Beauty and the beast: Superconformal symmetry in a monster module. Commun.Math. Phys. 119, 221–241 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01217740

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