Moonshine modules and a question of Griess

Abstract

We consider the situation in which a finite group acts on an infinite-dimensional graded module in such a way that the graded trace functions are weakly holomorphic modular forms. Under a mild hypothesis we completely describe the asymptotic module structure of the homogeneous subspaces. As a consequence we find that moonshine for a group gives rise to partial orderings on its irreducible representations. This serves as a first answer to a question posed by Griess. In particular, we show that our hypothesis holds for umbral moonshine and for automorphism groups of certain vertex operator algebras.