James Lepowsky

#2

"In 1979, John Conway and Simon Norton's famous paper, 'Monstrous Moonshine', outlined the remarkable connection between the monster group M and the theory of modular functions. The search for an explanation of this phenomenon involved the development and application of diverse areas of mathematics, including (generalized) Kac-Moody algebras, vertex (operator) algebras, automorphic forms and elliptic cohomology, together with string and conformal field theory from theoretical physics. This volume consists of seventeen papers based on talks presented at a workshop held to mark the anniversary of 'Monstrous Moonshine'. Containing a mixture of expository and current research material, they illustrate its extensive impact and reflect the broad range of research activity that has stemmed from the Moonshine conjectures. Potential directions for future development are also discussed"--Provided by publisher. "Modular Tensor Categories (MTCs for short)[1, 16] have attracted much attentionin recent years, which is due to the recognition of their importance in bothpure mathematics - 3-dimensional topology, representations of Vertex OperatorAlgebras (VOAs for short) - and theoretical physics"--Provided by publisher.

#3

The deep and relatively new field of vertex operator algebras is intimately related to a variety of areas in mathematics and physics: for example, the concepts of "monstrous moonshine," infinite-dimensional Lie theory, string theory, and conformal field theory. This book introduces the reader to the fundamental theory of vertex operator algebras and its basic techniques and examples. Beginning with a detailed presentation of the theoretical foundations and proceeding to a range of applications, the text includes a number of new, original results and also highlights and brings fresh perspective to important works of many researchers.