Non-invertible defects from the Conway SCFT to K3 sigma models II: duality and Fibonacci defects
Abstract
We continue the study, initiated in [hep-th:2504.18619], of topological defect lines (TDLs) in the Conway module Vf and K3 non-linear sigma models (NLSMs). In the case of Vf , we fully classify the potential N=1 (and N=4)--preserving duality defects for cyclic Tambara--Yamagami categories TY(ZN), noting a curious relation to genus zero groups of monstrous moonshine. We use the correspondence with Leech lattice endomorphisms, discovered in [hep-th:2504.18619], to construct a number of non-trivial examples of TDLs in Vf , including examples of irrational quantum dimension. In particular, we fully classify and construct defects for the TY(Z2) and TY(Z3) cases, and provide examples of duality defects for TY(Z2× Z2) and Fibonacci fusion categories as well. In the case of K3 NLSMs, we describe a duality defect of irrational quantum dimension 2 for the category TY(Z2, -1) in a particular torus orbifold, which exists on a 16-dimensional slice of the moduli space. We also provide a detailed analysis of spectral flow--preserving TDLs in Gepner models of K3, of independent interest, and use this to construct non-invertible defects for Fibonacci and Rep(S3) categories in particular examples. Finally we provide evidence for our conjecture in [hep-th:2504.18619] that special subcategories of such TDLs in Vf correspond to N=(4,4) and spectral flow--preserving defect lines in a corresponding K3 NLSM. In particular, we compute defect--twined elliptic genera for all non-invertible defects constructed in this article, demonstrating that for each defect found in a K3 NLSM, there is a corresponding defect in Vf with coincident twining genus, and making a prediction for a number of TDLs in K3 NLSMs yet to be found.
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