Gaussian Unitary Ensembles with Jump Discontinuities, PDEs and the Coupled Painlevé IV System

Abstract: We study the Hankel determinant generated by the Gaussian weight with jump discontinuities at $t_1,\cdots,t_m$. By making use of a pair of ladder operators satisfied by the associated monic orthogonal polynomials and three supplementary conditions, we show that the logarithmic derivative of the Hankel determinant satisfies a second order partial differential equation which is reduced to the $\sigma$-form of a Painlev\'{e} IV equation when $m=1$. Moreover, under the assumption that $t_k-t_1$ is fixed for $k=2,\cdots,m$, by considering the Riemann-Hilbert problem for the orthogonal polynomials, we construct direct relationships between the auxiliary quantities introduced in the ladder operators and solutions of a coupled Painlev\'{e} IV system.