Poincare polynomials of character varieties, Macdonald polynomials and affine Springer fibers

We prove an explicit formula for the Poincar\'e polynomials of parabolic character varieties of Riemann surfaces with semisimple local monodromies, which was conjectured by Hausel, Letellier and Rodriguez-Villegas. Using an approach of Mozgovoy and Schiffmann the problem is reduced to counting pairs of a parabolic vector bundles and a nilpotent endomorphism of prescribed generic type. The generating function counting these pairs is shown to be a product of Macdonald polynomials and the function counting pairs without parabolic structure. The modified Macdonald polynomial $\tilde H_\lambda[X;q,t]$ is interpreted as a weighted count of points of the affine Springer fiber over the constant nilpotent matrix of type $\lambda$.