Relaxed highest-weight modules I: rank $1$ cases

Abstract

Relaxed highest-weight modules play a central role in the study of many important vertex operator (super)algebras and their associated (logarithmic) conformal field theories, including the admissible-level affine models. Indeed, their structure and their (super)characters together form the crucial input data for the standard module formalism that describes the modular transformations and Grothendieck fusion rules of such theories. In this article, character formulae are proved for relaxed highest-weight modules over the simple admissible-level affine vertex operator superalgebras associated to $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ and $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$. Moreover, the structures of these modules are specified completely. This proves several conjectural statements in the literature for $\mathfrak{sl}_2$, at arbitrary admissible levels, and for $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$ at level $-\frac{5}{4}$. For other admissible levels, the $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$ results are believed to be new.