Closed form fermionic expressions for the Macdonald index

Abstract: We interpret aspects of the Schur indices, that were identified with characters of highest weight modules in Virasoro $(p,p')=(2,2k+3)$ minimal models for $k=1,2,\dots$, in terms of paths that first appeared in exact solutions in statistical mechanics. From that, we propose closed-form fermionic sum expressions, that is, $q, t$-series with manifestly non-negative coefficients, for two infinite-series of Macdonald indices of $(A_1,A_{2k})$ Argyres-Douglas theories that correspond to $t$-refinements of Virasoro $(p,p')=(2,2k+3)$ minimal model characters, and two rank-2 Macdonald indices that correspond to $t$-refinements of $\mathcal{W}_3$ non-unitary minimal model characters. Our proposals match with computations from 4D $\mathcal{N} = 2$ gauge theories \textit{via} the TQFT picture, based on the work of J Song arXiv:1509.06730.