Instanton counting on blowup. II. K-theoretic partition function

AbstractWe study Nekrasov's deformed partition function $Z(\varepsilon_1,\varepsilon_2,\vec{a};\mathfrak q,\boldsymbol\beta)$ of 5-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory compactified on a circle. Mathematically it is the generating function of the characters of the coordinate rings of the moduli spaces of instantons on $\mathbb R^4$. We show that it satisfies a system of functional equations, called blowup equations, whose solution is unique. As applications, we prove (a) $F(\varepsilon_1,\varepsilon_2,\vec{a};\mathfrak q,\boldsymbol\beta) = \varepsilon_1\varepsilon_2 \log Z(\varepsilon_1,\varepsilon_2,\vec{a};\mathfrak q,\boldsymbol\beta)$ is regular at $\varepsilon_1 = \varepsilon_2 = 0$ (a part of Nekrasov's conjecture), and (b) the genus $1$ parts, which are first several Taylor coefficients of $F(\varepsilon_1,\varepsilon_2,\vec{a};\mathfrak q,\boldsymbol\beta)$, are written explicitly in terms of $\tau = d^2 F(0,0,\vec{a};\mathfrak q,\boldsymbol\beta)/da^2$ in rank $2$ case.