Lyapunov exponents of the SHE for general initial data

Abstract: We consider the $(1+1)$-dimensional stochastic heat equation (SHE) with multiplicative white noise and the Cole-Hopf solution of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equation. We show an exact way of computing the Lyapunov exponents of the SHE for a large class of initial data which includes any bounded deterministic positive initial data and the stationary initial data. As a consequence, we derive exact formulas for the upper tail large deviation rate functions of the KPZ equation for general initial data.