Monstrous parafermionic defects and other non-invertible symmetries in chiral CFTs
Abstract
The structure of non-invertible symmetries in 2D CFT is closely tied to the algebra of preserved holomorphic fields, its representation theory, and its embedding in the full chiral algebra of the CFT. Unfortunately, finding new embeddings of a chiral algebra into another is a difficult mathematical problem, and one of the major obstacles in the pursue of new and exotic categories of non-invertible symmetries. In this work, we describe a simple general technique that leads to a number of new non-trivial results in this direction: (1) For the holomorphic Monster CFT Vnatural, we show that for every `Fricke' non-anomalous Monster element of order N, there is an embedding of the parafermion algebra su(2)N/u(1) in Vnatural, we compute the characters of its commutant, and describe the topological defects preserving these subalgebras. (2) We provide an easy-to-check sufficient condition for a holomorphic VOA V to be self-orbifold under a cyclic group of (invertible) symmetries, and determine the associated duality defect. (3) We find several new topological defects in CFTs arising from heterotic strings on T4. (4) We prove a number of VOA embeddings and topological defects in the Leech lattice CFT, in Schellekens theories, and other CFTs of various central charges, and suggest several generalizations of our methods.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{volpato2026monstrous,
title = {{Monstrous parafermionic defects and other non-invertible symmetries in chiral CFTs}},
author = {Roberto Volpato},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.03043},
eprint = {2609.03043},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03043},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Monstrous parafermionic defects and other non-invertible symmetries in chiral CFTs
AU - Roberto Volpato
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/11
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.03043
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03043
AB - The structure of non-invertible symmetries in 2D CFT is closely tied to the algebra of preserved holomorphic fields, its representation theory, and its embedding in the full chiral algebra of the CFT. Unfortunately, finding new embeddings of a chiral algebra into another is a difficult mathematical problem, and one of the major obstacles in the pursue of new and exotic categories of non-invertible symmetries. In this work, we describe a simple general technique that leads to a number of new non-trivial results in this direction: (1) For the holomorphic Monster CFT V^natural, we show that for every `Fricke' non-anomalous Monster element of order N, there is an embedding of the parafermion algebra su(2)_N/u(1) in V^natural, we compute the characters of its commutant, and describe the topological defects preserving these subalgebras. (2) We provide an easy-to-check sufficient condition for a holomorphic VOA V to be self-orbifold under a cyclic group of (invertible) symmetries, and determine the associated duality defect. (3) We find several new topological defects in CFTs arising from heterotic strings on T^4. (4) We prove a number of VOA embeddings and topological defects in the Leech lattice CFT, in Schellekens theories, and other CFTs of various central charges, and suggest several generalizations of our methods.
ER -