TASI Lectures on Moonshine

TL;DR

This paper reviews the mathematical and physical aspects of moonshine, exploring unexpected relations between finite groups and modular objects, and their implications in string theory and black hole physics.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of moonshine phenomena, connecting classical and recent discoveries with physical theories, especially string theory, in a self-contained manner.

Findings

Classical monstrous moonshine and recent developments

Connections between moonshine and string theory black holes

Physical realization of moonshine phenomena

Abstract

The word moonshine refers to unexpected relations between the two distinct mathematical structures: finite group representations and modular objects. It is believed that the key to understanding moonshine is through physical theories with special symmetries. Recent years have seen a varieties of new ways in which finite group representations and modular objects can be connected to each other, and these developments have brought promises and also puzzles into the string theory community. These lecture notes aim to bring graduate students in theoretical physics and mathematical physics to the forefront of this active research area. In Part II of this note, we review the various cases of moonshine connections, ranging from the classical monstrous moonshine established in the last century to the most recent findings. In Part III, we discuss the relation between the moonshine connections and physics, especially string theory. After briefly reviewing a recent physical realisation of monstrous moonshine, we will describe in some details the mystery of the physical aspects of umbral moonshine, and also mention some other setups where string theory black holes can be connected to moonshine. To make the exposition self-contained, we also provide the relevant background knowledge in Part I, including sections on finite groups, modular objects, and two-dimensional conformal field theories. This part occupies half of the pages of this set of notes and can be skipped by readers who are already familiar with the relevant concepts and techniques.