McKay’s E7 Observation on the Baby Monster

Abstract

In this paper, we study McKay’s E7 observation on the Baby Monster. By investigating the so-called derived c=7/10 Virasoro vectors, we show that there is a natural correspondence between dihedral subgroups of the Baby Monster and certain subalgebras of the Baby Monster vertex operator algebra which are constructed by the nodes of the affine E7 diagram. This allows us to reinterpret McKay’s E7 observation via the theory of vertex operator algebras. For a class of vertex operator algebras including the Moonshine module, we will show that the product of two Miyamoto involutions associated to derived c=7/10 Virasoro vectors in certain commutant vertex operator algebras is an element of order at most 4. For the case of the Moonshine module, we obtain the Baby monster vertex operator algebra as the commutant and we can identify the group generated by these Miyamoto involutions with the Baby Monster and recover the {3,4}-transposition property of the Baby Monster in terms of vertex operator algebras.