Transformations among large c conformal field theories

Abstract

We show that there is a set of transformations that relates all of the 24 dimensional even self-dual (Niemeier) lattices, and also leads to non-lattice objects some of which can perhaps be interpreted as a basis for the construction of holomorphic conformal field theory. In the second part of this paper, we extend our observations to higher-dimensional conformal field theories build on extremal partition functions, where we generate c = 24 k theories. We argue that there exists generalizations of the c = 24 models based on Niemeier lattices and of the non-Niemeier spin-1 theories. The extremal cases have spectra decomposable into the irreducible representations of the Fischer-Griess Monster. This additional symmetry leads us to conjecture that these extremal theories, as well as the higher-dimensional analogs of the group lattice bases Niemeiers, will eventually yield to a full construction of their associated CFTs. We observe interesting periodicities in the coefficients of extremal partition functions and characters of the extremal vertex operator algebras. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.