Delay Painlevé-I equation, associated polynomials and Masur-Veech volumes

Abstract: We study a delay-differential analogue of the first Painlev\'e equation obtained as a delay periodic reduction of Shabat's dressing chain. We construct formal entire solutions to this equation and introduce a new family of polynomials (called Bernoulli-Catalan polynomials), which are defined by a nonlinear recurrence of Catalan type, and which share properties with Bernoulli and Euler polynomials. We also discuss meromorphic solutions and describe the singularity structure of this delay Painlev\'e-I equation in terms of an affine Weyl group of type $A_1^{(1)}$. As an application we demonstrate the link with the problem of calculation of the Masur-Veech volumes of the moduli spaces of meromorphic quadratic differentials by re-deriving some of the known formulas.