Quasi-Galois symmetries of the modular \(S\)-matrix (Q1918070)

It is shown that the Galois symmetries of rational conformal field theories can be generalized to so-called quasi-Galois symmetries for the special case of WZW (Wess-Zumino-Witten) theories because of the existence of the Kac-Peterson formula for the \(S\)-matrix for the WZW field theories. The application of Galois theory to conformal field theory comes from the fact that one can show that the \(S\)-matrix elements belong to an abelian Galois extension of the rationals \(\mathbb{Q}\), thus by the Kronecker-Weber theorem, are contained in some cyclotomic field \(\mathbb{Q}(\zeta_n)\), which has Galois group \(\mathbb{Z}^\times_n\). For WZW the (minimal) \(n\) can be calculated in terms of the corresponding affine Lie algebra. Thus Galois transformations correspond to `scalings' by numbers \(\ell\) with \(\text{gcd}(\ell,n)=1\). Admitting arbitrary integers \(\ell\) rather than those prime to \(n\) leads to quasi-Galois transformations. The quasi-Galois symmetries give rise to large numbers of equalities and sum rules for entries of the modular \(S\)-matrix as well as modular invariants. They can also be used to obtain conformal embedding invariants for the affine Lie algebra \({\mathfrak g}\) of the corresponding WZW theory. Two explicit examples \((\overline{{\mathfrak g}}=F_4\) and \(\overline{{\mathfrak g}}=E_6)\) are presented.