Meromorphic CFTs have central charges c = 8$\mathbb{N}$: a proof based on the MLDE approach and Rademacher series

Abstract

In this short note, we present a simple and elementary proof that meromorphic conformal field theories (CFTs) have central charges of the form: $c=8N$ with $N\in \mathbb{N}$ (the set of natural numbers) using the modular linear differential equations (MLDEs) approach. We first set up the 1-character MLDE for arbitrary value of the Wronskian index: $\ell$. From this we get the general form of the meromorphic CFT's character. We then study its modular transformations and the asymptotic value of it's Fourier coefficients -- using Rademacher series -- to conclude that odd values of $\ell$ make the character in-admissible implying that the central charge for admissible character has to be a multiple of 8.

arXiv comment15 pages, comments are most welcome. v2: modified the title and abstract slightly, references updated, fixed typos, main results and analysis unchanged