BPS states, torus links and wild character varieties

A string theoretic framework is constructed relating the cohomology of wild character varieties to refined stable pair theory and torus link invariants. Explicit conjectural formulas are derived for wild character varieties with a unique irregular point on the projective line. For this case the string theoretic construction leads to a conjectural colored generalization of existing results of Hausel, Mereb and Wong as well as Shende, Treumann and Zaslow.