Influence of inlet and bulk noise on Rayleigh-Benard convection with lateral flow - art. no. 056301

Spatiotemporal properties of convective fluctuations and of their correlati ons are investigated theoretically in the vicinity of the threshold for ons et of convection in the presence of a lateral through-flow using the full l inearized equations of fluctuating hydrodynamics. The effect of external fo rcing by inlet boundary conditions on the downstream evolution of convectiv e fields is separated from the effect of internal bulk thermal forcing with the use of spatial Laplace transformations. They show how the spatial vari ation of fluctuations and of their correlations are governed by the six spa tial characteristic exponents of the field equations.