What is moonshine?

It is proved that a vertex operator algebra is isomorphic to the moonshine VOA of Frenkel-Lepowsky-Meurman if it satisfies certain conditions. Our two main theorems establish a weak version of the FLM uniqueness conjecture for the moonshine vertex operator algebra. We believe that these are the first such results.

Motivated by the appearance of penumbral moonshine, and by evidence that penumbral moonshine enjoys an extensive relationship to generalized monstrous moonshine via infinite products, we establish a general construction in this work which uses singular theta lifts and a concrete construction at the level of modules for a finite group to translate between moonshine in weight one-half and moonshine in weight zero. This construction serves as a foundation for a companion paper i...

The aim of this note is to point out an interesting fact related to the elliptic genus of complex algebraic surfaces in the context of Mathieu moonshine. We also discuss the case of 4-folds.

Phys and Math are two colleagues at the University of Sa{\c c}enbon (Crefan Kingdom), dialoguing about the remarkable efficiency of mathematics for physics. They talk about the notches on the Ishango bone, the various uses of psi in maths and physics, they arrive at dessins d'enfants, moonshine concepts, Rademacher sums and their significance in the quantum world. You should not miss their eccentric proposal of relating Bell's theorem to the Baby Monster group. Their hyperbol...

Admin note: withdrawn by arXiv admin because of the use of a pseudonym, in violation of arXiv policy.

We consider the situation in which a finite group acts on an infinite-dimensional graded module in such a way that the graded trace functions are weakly holomorphic modular forms. Under a mild hypothesis we completely describe the asymptotic module structure of the homogeneous subspaces. As a consequence we find that moonshine for a group gives rise to partial orderings on its irreducible representations. This serves as a first answer to a question posed by Griess. In particu...

The commencement of monstrous moonshine is a connection between the largest sporadic simple group---the monster---and complex elliptic curves. Here we explain how a closer look at this connection leads, via the Thompson group, to recently observed relationships between the non-monstrous sporadic simple group of O'Nan and certain families of elliptic curves defined over the rationals. We also describe umbral moonshine from this perspective.

These lecture notes are based on a set of six lectures that I gave in Edinburgh in 2008/2009 and they cover some topics in the interface between Geometry and Physics. They involve some unsolved problems and conjectures and I hope they may stimulate readers to investigate them.

The results in the recently posted manuscript arXiv:math/0405153v3 are incorrect. The correct version of the aimed results is not original. The preprint contains material from references that are not properly quoted.

This is an extended version of my 2018 Heinemann prize lecture describing the work for which I got the prize. The citation is very broad so this describes virtually all my work prior to 1995 and some afterwards. It discusses work in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, constructive quantum field theory and statistical mechanics.