NOISE SUSTAINED PATTERN GROWTH - BULK VERSUS BOUNDARY EFFECTS

The effect of thermally generated bulk stochastic forces on the statis tical growth dynamics of forward bifurcating propagating macroscopic p atterns is compared with the influence of fluctuations at the boundary of a semi-infinite system, 0 < x. To that end the linear complex Ginz burg-Landau amplitude equation with additive stochastic forcing is sol ved by a spatial Laplace transformation in the presence of arbitrary b oundary conditions for the fluctuations of the pattern amplitude at x = 0. A situation where the latter are advected with an imposed through -flow from an outside upstream part towards the inlet boundary at x = 0 is investigated in more detail. The spatiotemporal growth behavior i n the convectively unstable regime is compared with recent work by J. B. Swift, K. L. Babcock, and P. C. Hohenberg [Physica A 204, 625 (1994 )] where a special boundary condition is imposed.