Universal aspects of curved, flat & stationary-state Kardar-Parisi-Zhang statistics

Abstract: Motivated by the recent exact solution of the {\it stationary-state} Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) statistics by Imamura & Sasamoto (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 108}, 190603 (2012)), as well as a precursor experimental signature unearthed by Takeuchi (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 110}, 210604 (2013)), we establish here the universality of these phenomena, examining scaling behaviors of directed polymers in a random medium, the stochastic heat equation with multiplicative noise, and kinetically roughened KPZ growth models. We emphasize the value of cross KPZ-Class universalities, revealing crossover effects of experimental relevance. Finally, we illustrate the great utility of KPZ scaling theory by an optimized numerical analysis of the Ulam problem of random permutations.