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Abstract This is the first in a series of papers devoted to the study of spin chains capturing the spectral problem of 4d N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 SCFTs in the planar limit. At one loop and in the quantum plane limit, we discover a quasi-Hopf symmetry algebra, defined by the R-matrix read off from the superpotential. This implies that when orbifolding the N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 symmetry algebra down to the N $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 one and then marginaly deforming, the broken generators are not lost, but get upgraded to quantum generators. Importantly, we demonstrate that these chains are dynamical, in the sense that their Hamiltonian depends on a parameter which is dynamically determined along the chain. At one loop we map the holomorphic SU(3) scalar sector to a dynamical 15-vertex model, which corresponds to an RSOS model, whose adjacency graph can be read off from the gauge theory quiver/brane tiling. One scalar SU(2) sub-sector is described by an alternating nearest-neighbour Hamiltonian, while another choice of SU(2) sub-sector leads to a dynamical dilute Temperley-Lieb model. These sectors have a common vacuum state, around which the magnon dispersion relations are naturally uniformised by elliptic functions. Concretely, for the ℤ2 quiver theory we study these dynamical chains by solving the one- and two-magnon problems with the coordinate Bethe ansatz approach. We confirm our analytic results by numerical comparison with the explicit diagonalisation of the Hamiltonian for short closed chains.

Abstract Counting formulae for general primary fields in free four dimensional conformal field theories of scalars, vectors and matrices are derived. These are specialised to count primaries which obey extremality conditions defined in terms of the dimensions and left or right spins (i.e. in terms of relations between the charges under the Cartan subgroup of SO(4, 2)). The construction of primary fields for scalar field theory is mapped to a problem of determining multi-variable polynomials subject to a system of symmetry and differential constraints. For the extremal primaries, we give a construction in terms of holomorphic polynomial functions on permutation orbifolds, which are shown to be Calabi-Yau spaces.