Lost chapters in CHL black holes: untwisted quarter-BPS dyons in the ℤ2 model

Motivated by recent advances in Donaldson-Thomas theory, four-dimensional $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 4 string-string duality is examined in a reduced rank theory on a less studied BPS sector. In particular we identify candidate partition functions of “untwisted” quarter-BPS dyons in the heterotic ℤ2 CHL model by studying the associated chiral genus two partition function, based on the M-theory lift of string webs argument by Dabholkar and Gaiotto. This yields meromorphic Siegel modular forms for the Iwahori subgroup B(2) ⊂ Sp4(ℤ) which generate BPS indices for dyons with untwisted sector electric charge, in contrast to twisted sector dyons counted by a multiplicative lift of twisted-twining elliptic genera known from Mathieu moonshine. The new partition functions are shown to satisfy the expected constraints coming from wall-crossing and S-duality symmetry as well as the black hole entropy based on the Gauss-Bonnet term in the effective action. In these aspects our analysis confirms and extends work of Banerjee, Sen and Srivastava, which only addressed a subset of the untwisted sector dyons considered here. Our results are also compared with recently conjectured formulae of Bryan and Oberdieck for the partition functions of primitive DT invariants of the CHL orbifold X = (K3 × T2)/ℤ2, as suggested by string duality with type IIA theory on X.

Drag force on heavy quarks and spatial string tension

Heavy quark transport coefficients in a strongly coupled Quark–Gluon Plasma can be evaluated using a gauge/string duality and lattice QCD. Via this duality, one can argue that for low momenta the drag coefficient for heavy quarks is proportional to the spatial string tension. Such a tension is well-studied on the lattice that allows one to straightforwardly make non-perturbative estimates of the heavy quark diffusion coefficients near the critical point. The obtained results are consistent with those in the literature.