A string theoretic derivation is given for the conjecture of Hausel, Letellier, and Rodriguez-Villegas on the cohomology of character varieties with marked points. Their formula is identified with a refined BPS expansion in the stable pair theory of
a local root stack, generalizing previous work of the first two authors in collaboration with G. Pan. Haimans geometric construction for Macdonald polynomials is shown to emerge naturally in this context via geometric engineering. In particular this yields a new conjectural relation between Macdonald polynomials and refined local orbifold curve counting invariants. The string theoretic approach also leads to a new spectral cover construction for parabolic Higgs bundles in terms of holomorphic symplectic orbifolds.
BPS quivers for N=2 SU(N) gauge theories are derived via geometric engineering from derived categories of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds. While the outcome is in agreement of previous low energy constructions, the geometric approach leads to several new
results. An absence of walls conjecture is formulated for all values of N, relating the field theory BPS spectrum to large radius D-brane bound states. Supporting evidence is presented as explicit computations of BPS degeneracies in some examples. These computations also prove the existence of BPS states of arbitrarily high spin and infinitely many marginal stability walls at weak coupling. Moreover, framed quiver models for framed BPS states are naturally derived from this formalism, as well as a mathematical formulation of framed and unframed BPS degeneracies in terms of motivic and cohomological Donaldson-Thomas invariants. We verify the conjectured absence of BPS states with exotic SU(2)_R quantum numbers using motivic DT invariants. This application is based in particular on a complete recursive algorithm which determine the unframed BPS spectrum at any point on the Coulomb branch in terms of noncommutative Donaldson-Thomas invariants for framed quiver representations.
A conjectural recursive relation for the Poincare polynomial of the Hitchin moduli space is derived from wallcrossing in the refined local Donaldson-Thomas theory of a curve. A doubly refined generalization of this theory is also conjectured and show
n to similarly determine the Hodge polynomial of the same moduli space.
