Non-abelian anyons and some cousins of the Arad–Herzog conjecture

Abstract

Long ago, Arad and Herzog (AH) conjectured that, in finite simple groups, the product of two conjugacy classes of length greater than one is never a single conjugacy class. We discuss implications of this conjecture for non-abelian anyons in 2 + 1-dimensional discrete gauge theories. Thinking in this way also suggests closely related statements about finite simple groups and their associated discrete gauge theories. We prove these statements and provide some physical intuition for their validity. Finally, we explain that the lack of certain dualities in theories with non-abelian finite simple gauge groups provides a non-trivial check of the AH conjecture.