Abstract |
I will give a brief introduction to moonshine, the surprising connection between modular forms and sporadic simple groups. I will quickly discuss the
original monstrous moonshine, and then talk about the more recently discovered Mathieu moonshine. I will explain why the explanation of the original
moonshine most likely does not work for this new type of moonshine. I will then discuss a proposed explanation due to Taormina and Wendland,
namely the idea of `symmetry surfing', i.e. combining the symmetries of different K3 sigma models. I will present some new results which provide
evidence that symmetry surfing should work also for all higher BPS states. This is based on work with Matthias Gaberdiel and Hynek Paul. |