Circular quiver gauge theories, isomonodromic deformations and $$W_N$$ fermions on the torus

Abstract

AbstractWe study the relation between class $$\mathcal {S}$$ S theories on punctured tori and isomonodromic deformations of flat SL(N) connections on the two-dimensional torus with punctures. Turning on the self-dual $$\Omega $$ Ω -background corresponds to a deautonomization of the Seiberg–Witten integrable system which implies a specific time dependence in its Hamiltonians. We show that the corresponding $$\tau $$ τ -function is proportional to the dual gauge theory partition function, the proportionality factor being a nontrivial function of the solution of the deautonomized Seiberg–Witten integrable system. This is obtained by mapping the isomonodromic deformation problem to $$W_N$$ W N free fermion correlators on the torus.