Symmetries of the refined D1/D5 BPS spectrum

We examine the large $N$ 1/4-BPS spectrum of the symmetric orbifold CFT Sym$^N(M)$ deformed to the supergravity point in moduli space for $M= K3$ and $T^4$. We consider refinement under both left- and right-moving $SU(2)_R$ symmetries of the superconformal algebra, and decompose the spectrum into characters of the algebra. We find that at large $N$ the character decomposition satisfies an unusual property, in which the degeneracy only depends on a certain linear combination of left- and right-moving quantum numbers, suggesting deeper symmetry structure. Furthermore, we consider the action of discrete symmetry groups on these degeneracies, where certain subgroups of the Conway group are known to play a role. We also comment on the potential for larger discrete symmetry groups to appear in the large $N$ limit.Comment: 27 pages + appendices; v2: minor change

Twining Genera of (0,4) Supersymmetric Sigma Models on K3

Conformal field theories with (0,4) worldsheet supersymmetry and K3 target can be used to compactify the E8xE8 heterotic string to six dimensions in a supersymmetric manner. The data specifying such a model includes an appropriate configuration of 24 gauge instantons in the E8xE8 gauge group to satisfy the constraints of anomaly cancellation. In this note, we compute twining genera - elliptic genera with appropriate insertions of discrete symmetry generators in the trace - for (0,4) theories with various instanton embeddings. We do this by constructing linear sigma models which flow to the desired conformal field theories, and using the techniques of localization. We present several examples of such twining genera which are consistent with a moonshine relating these (0,4) models to the finite simple sporadic group M24.Comment: 22 pages, 3 tables. We thank T. Eguchi and K. Hikami for permission to copy our Tables 2 and 3 (M24 character table and q-expansions of some twining genera in the (4,4) sigma model with K3 target) from their article arXiv:1008.492