Fusion Rules for Affine Kac-Moody Algebras

Abstract

This is an expository introduction to fusion rules for affine Kac-Moody algebras, with major focus on the algorithmic aspects of their computation and the relationship with tensor product decompositions. Many explicit examples are included with figures illustrating the rank 2 cases. New results relating fusion coefficients to tensor product coefficients are proved, and a conjecture is given which shows that the Frenkel-Zhu affine fusion rule theorem can be seen as a beautiful generalization of the Parasarathy-Ranga Rao-Varadarajan tensor product theorem. Previous work of the author and collaborators on a different approach to fusion rules from elementary group theory is also explained.