S-duality and the N=2 Lens Space Index

Abstract

We discuss some of the analytic properties of lens space indices for 4d N=2 theories of class S. The S-duality properties of these theories highly constrain the lens space indices, and imply in particular that they are naturally acted upon by a set of commuting difference operators corresponding to surface defects. We explicitly identify the difference operators to be a matrix-valued generalization of the elliptic Ruijsenaars-Schneider model. In a special limit these difference operators can be expressed naturally in terms of Cherednik operators appearing in the double affine Hecke algebras, with the eigenfunctions given by non-symmetric Macdonald polynomials.