On duality and extended chiral symmetry in the SL(2,R) WZW model

Abstract: Two chiral aspects of the SL(2,R) WZW model in an operator formalism are investigated. First, the meaning of duality, or conjugation, of primary fields is clarified. On a class of modules obtained from the discrete series it is shown, by looking at spaces of two-point conformal blocks, that a natural definition of contragredient module provides a suitable notion of conjugation of primary fields, consistent with known two-point functions. We find strong indications that an apparent contradiction with the Clebsch-Gordan series of SL(2,R), and proposed fusion rules, is explained by nonsemisimplicity of a certain category. Second, results indicating an infinite cyclic simple current group, corresponding to spectral flow automorphisms, are presented. In particular, the subgroup corresponding to even spectral flow provides part of a hypothetical extended chiral algebra resulting in proposed modular invariant bulk spectra.