Differential Equations for the KPZ and Periodic KPZ Fixed Points

The KPZ fixed point is a 2d random field, conjectured to be the universal limiting fluctuation field for the height function of models in the KPZ universality class. Similarly, the periodic KPZ fixed point is a conjectured universal field for spatially periodic models. For both fields, their multi-point distributions in the space-time domain have been computed recently. We show that for the case of the narrow-wedge initial condition, these multi-point distributions can be expressed in terms of so-called integrable operators. We then consider a class of operators that include the ones arising from the KPZ and the periodic KPZ fixed points, and find that they are related to various matrix integrable differential equations such as coupled matrix mKdV equations, coupled matrix NLS equations with complex time, and matrix KP-II equations. When applied to the KPZ fixed points, our results extend previously known differential equations for one-point distributions and equal-time, multi-position distributions to multi-time, multi-position setup.