Nicolai Reshetikhin

In this paper we construct irregular representations of the affine Kac-Moody algebra $\hat{sl}(2,C)$. We show how such irregular representations correspond to irregular Gaiotto-Teschner representations of the Virasoro algebra. The intertwiners for such representations satisfy a version of Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov (KZ) equations which we call irregular KZ equations. By connecting to 2d Liouville theory, we show how the conformal blocks governed by our irregular KZ equation correspond to 4d Argyres-Douglas theories with surface operator insertions. The corresponding flat connections describe braiding between such operators on the Gaiotto curve.

We extend the graphical calculus developed in the first part of this paper to the parametrising spaces of quantum vertex operators. This involves a graphical implementation of the dynamical twist functor, which is a strict monoidal functor that describes how a morphism acting on the spin space of a quantum vertex operator $Φ$ is transported to a morphism on the parametrising space of $Φ$. The monoidal structure of the underlying nonstrict monoidal functor, considered before by Etingof and Varchenko in 1999, is given in terms of dynamical fusion operators, which are operators that describe the fusion of quantum vertex operators on the level of parametrising spaces. In the second part of the paper we use the extended graphical calculus to give intuitive, graphical derivations of various systems of difference equations for universal multipoint weighted trace functions. This includes the dual $q$-Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov-Bernard (KZB) and the dual Macdonald-Ruijsenaars (MR) equations, earlier obtained by Etingof and Varchenko in 2000, as well as an extension of the dual MR equations called dual coordinate MR equations. We use a known symmetry property of the universal weighted trace function, involving the exchange of its geometric and spectral parameter, to derive non-dual versions of these equations.