On Witten's extremal partition functions

Abstract

In his famous 2007 paper on three dimensional quantum gravity, Witten defined candidates for the partition functions $$Z_k(q)=\sum_{n=-k}^{\infty}w_k(n)q^n$$ of potential extremal CFTs with central charges of the form $c=24k$. Although such CFTs remain elusive, he proved that these modular functions are well-defined. In this note, we point out several explicit representations of these functions. These involve the partition function $p(n)$, Faber polynomials, traces of singular moduli, and Rademacher sums. Furthermore, for each prime $p\leq 11$, the $p$ series $Z_k(q)$, where $k\in \{1, \dots, p-1\} \cup \{p+1\},$ possess a Ramanujan congruence. More precisely, for every non-zero integer $n$ we have that $$ w_k(pn) \equiv 0\begin{cases} \pmod{2^{11}}\ \ \ \ &{\text {\rm if}}\ p=2, \pmod{3^5} \ \ \ \ &{\text {\rm if}}\ p=3, \pmod{5^2}\ \ \ \ &{\text {\rm if}}\ p=5, \pmod{p} \ \ \ \ &{\text {\rm if}}\ p=7, 11. \end{cases} $$