BPS states, torus links and wild character varieties (Q1751300)

Let \(C\) be a smooth projective curve with marked points, each with an irregular type of germs of \(\mathfrak{t}\)-valued meromorphic functions (\(\mathfrak{t}\) is a Cartan subalgebra of a reductive group \(G\)). A wild character variety is a moduli space of Stokes data associated to singular \(G\)-connections on such curves. These moduli appeared in Witten's work on wildly ramified Langlands correspondence, and were constructed rigorously as multiplicative symplectic quotients by Boalch. The main result of this paper is a conjectural generalization of the recent results of Hausel-Mereb-Wong and Shende-Treumann-Zaslow for the weighted Poincaré polynomials to wild character varieties of genus zero curves with one singular point. It provides strong evidence for the wild version of the \(P=W\) conjecture. The idea is to construct a Calabi-Yau threefold \(Y\), the product of a holomorphic symplectic surface \(S\) with the affine line equipped with a natural projection to \(C\), such that the moduli of stable pairs on \(Y\) is related to to an irregular parabolic Hitchin system on \(C\) via a spectral construction. The perverse Betti numbers of the Hitchin system correspond to the stable pair invariants of \(Y\), as refined by Kontsevich-Soibelman. The authors prove an isomorphism between the moduli stacks of semistable torsion sheaves on \(S\), and of semistable irregular parabolic Higgs bundles on \(C\). A conjectural Gopakumar-Vafa expansion then relates the weighted Poincaré polynomials to the refined stable pair invariants. In string-theoretic terms, the latter count the BPS states of supersymmetric D2-D0 configurations bound to a D6 brane. For the genus zero curves with one pole physical conjectures relate them to refined colored invariants of \((l,(n-2)l)\)-torus links (\(l\) is the number of sections in the Stokes data, and \(n\) is the pole order). These are computed using the refined Chern-Simons theory of Aganagic-Shakirov, and coupled to the one-leg vertex factors via the refined topolgical vertex of Awata-Kanno. As a result, the partition function of refined stable pairs is explicitly expressed in terms of polynomials, conjecturally equal to the perverse Poincaré polynomials of irregular parabolic Higgs bundles. Some numerical evidence for conjectures is presented in the Appendices. No localization theorem is known for the perverse Poincaré polynomials, so their direct computation is very challenging.