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We perform a detailed study of a class of irregular correlators in Liouville Conformal Field Theory, of the related Virasoro conformal blocks with irregular singularities and of their connection formulae. Upon considering their semi-classical limit, we provide explicit expressions of the connection matrices for the Heun function and a class of its confluences. Their calculation is reduced to concrete combinatorial formulae from conformal block expansions.

A bstract We study black hole linear perturbation theory in a four-dimensional Schwarzschild (anti) de Sitter background. When dealing with a positive cosmological constant, the corresponding spectral problem is solved systematically via the Nekrasov-Shatashvili functions or, equivalently, classical Virasoro conformal blocks. However, this approach can be more complicated to implement for certain perturbations if the cosmological constant is negative . For these cases, we propose an alternative method to set up perturbation theory for both small and large black holes in an analytical manner. Our analysis reveals a new underlying recursive structure that involves multiple polylogarithms. We focus on gravitational, electromagnetic, and conformally coupled scalar perturbations subject to Dirichlet and Robin boundary conditions. The low-lying modes of the scalar sector of gravitational perturbations and its hydrodynamic limit are studied in detail.

A bstract We compute one-loop corrections to the euclidean gravitational path integral of near-extremal (anti-)de Sitter-Kerr black hole in terms of the connection coefficients of the Heun equation describing the black hole linear perturbations in the Teukolsky formalism. We show that different near-extremal limits lead to distinct physical properties of the gravitational configuration, as they get described by distinct limiting differential equations. As a result, the light modes emerging in the limit determine different scaling properties in the temperature of the one-loop determinants. We show that the cold case displays distinctive universal log(T) corrections to the entropy of the system, including the ultracold regime. On the contrary, these do not appear in the limit in which the event horizon superimposes onto the cosmological one. In the Schwarzschild-de Sitter case, a further check is performed by comparison with the Denef-Hartnoll-Sachdev formula.

A bstract We show that the vortex moduli space in non-abelian supersymmetric gauge theories on the two dimensional plane with adjoint and anti-fundamental matter can be described as an holomorphic submanifold of the instanton moduli space in four dimensions. The vortex partition functions for these theories are computed via equivariant localization. We show that these coincide with the field theory limit of the topological vertex on the strip with boundary conditions corresponding to column diagrams. Moreover, we resum the field theory limit of the vertex partition functions in terms of generalized hypergeometric functions formulating their AGT dual description as interacting surface operators of simple type. Analogously we resum the topological open string amplitudes in terms of q-deformed generalized hypergeometric functions proving that they satisfy appropriate finite difference equations.

We compute the elliptic genus of the D1/D7 brane system in flat space, finding a non-trivial dependence on the number of D7 branes, and provide an F-theory interpretation of the result. We show that the JK-residues contributing to the elliptic genus are in one-to-one correspondence with coloured plane partitions and that the elliptic genus can be written as a chiral correlator of vertex operators on the torus. We also study the quantum mechanical system describing D0/D6 bound states on a circle, which leads to a plethystic exponential formula that can be connected to the M-theory graviton index on a multi-Taub-NUT background. The formula is a conjectural expression for higher-rank equivariant K-theoretic Donaldson-Thomas invariants on ℂ3.

A bstract We study supersymmetric SU(2) gauge theories coupled to non-Lagrangian superconformal field theories induced by compactifying the six dimensional A 1 (2,0) theory on Riemann surfaces with irregular punctures. These are naturally associated to Hitchin systems with wild ramification whose spectral curves provide the relevant Seiberg-Witten geometries. We propose that the prepotential of these gauge theories on the Ω-background can be obtained from the corresponding irregular conformal blocks on the Riemann surfaces via a generalization of the coherent state construction to the case of higher order singularities.

We provide evidence that the conformal blocks of super Liouville conformal field theory are described in terms of the SU(2) Nekrasov partition function on the ALE space .

We analyze conformal blocks with multiple (semi-)degenerate field insertions in Liouville/Toda conformal field theories an show that their vector space is fully reproduced by the four-dimensional limit of open topological string amplitudes on the strip with generic boundary conditions associated to a suitable quiver gauge theory. As a by product we identify the non-abelian vortex partition function with a specific fusion channel of degenerate conformal blocks.

We study a quiver description of the nested Hilbert scheme of points on the affine plane and its higher rank generalization – that is, the moduli space of flags of framed torsion-free sheaves on the projective plane. We show that stable representations of the quiver provide an ADHM-like construction for such moduli spaces. We introduce a natural torus action and use equivariant localization to compute some of their (virtual) topological invariants, including the case of compact toric surfaces. We conjecture that the generating function of holomorphic Euler characteristics for rank one is given in terms of polynomials in the equivariant weights, which, for specific numerical types, coincide with (modified) Macdonald polynomials. From the physics viewpoint, the quivers we study describe a class of surface defects in four-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories in terms of nested instantons.

A bstract We compute the elliptic genus of the D1/D7 brane system in flat space, finding a non-trivial dependence on the number of D7 branes, and provide an F-theory interpretation of the result. We show that the JK-residues contributing to the elliptic genus are in one-to-one correspondence with coloured plane partitions and that the elliptic genus can be written as a chiral correlator of vertex operators on the torus. We also study the quantum mechanical system describing D0/D6 bound states on a circle, which leads to a plethystic exponential formula that can be connected to the M-theory graviton index on a multi-Taub-NUT background. The formula is a conjectural expression for higher-rank equivariant K-theoretic Donaldson-Thomas invariants on ℂ 3 .