Dualities, symmetries and the elliptic genus of 2d (0,2) SCFTs
Abstract
While naively simpler than its higher dimensional cousins, 2d physics still has its own share of puzzles. An example of this is instances of dualities of (0,2) theories, passing all consistency checks save for a mismatch in global symmetry. This is common when said duality can be motivated by dimensional reduction of a duality of 4d 𝒩=1 theories where said symmetry emerges in 2d, often from an anomalous 4d symmetry. It is commonly believed that these symmetries are broken in the 2d theory, though often the mechanism for such breaking is not understood. We examine various appearances of this phenomenon and show that in these cases the elliptic genus shows signs of the presence of marginal operators that can break these symmetries. Interestingly, these operators do not appear perturbatively but emerge from the calculation, raising the question of what operators the (0,2) elliptic genus actually counts. This provides a potential mechanism to overcome the discrepancy in symmetry, though we point out some potential subtleties.
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BibTeX
@misc{malka2026dualities,
title = {{Dualities, symmetries and the elliptic genus of 2d (0,2) SCFTs}},
author = {Salomon Malka and Gabi Zafrir},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.13389},
eprint = {2610.13389},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13389},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Dualities, symmetries and the elliptic genus of 2d (0,2) SCFTs
AU - Salomon Malka
AU - Gabi Zafrir
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/09
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.13389
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13389
AB - While naively simpler than its higher dimensional cousins, 2d physics still has its own share of puzzles. An example of this is instances of dualities of (0,2) theories, passing all consistency checks save for a mismatch in global symmetry. This is common when said duality can be motivated by dimensional reduction of a duality of 4d 𝒩=1 theories where said symmetry emerges in 2d, often from an anomalous 4d symmetry. It is commonly believed that these symmetries are broken in the 2d theory, though often the mechanism for such breaking is not understood. We examine various appearances of this phenomenon and show that in these cases the elliptic genus shows signs of the presence of marginal operators that can break these symmetries. Interestingly, these operators do not appear perturbatively but emerge from the calculation, raising the question of what operators the (0,2) elliptic genus actually counts. This provides a potential mechanism to overcome the discrepancy in symmetry, though we point out some potential subtleties.
ER -