Hydrodynamic stability in the presence of a stochastic forcing:a case study in convection

Abstract

We investigate the stability of a statistically stationary conductive state for Rayleigh-B\'enard convection between stress-free plates that arises due to a bulk stochastic internal heating. This setup may be seen as a generalization to a stochastic setting of the seminal 1916 study of Lord Rayleigh. Our results indicate that stochastic forcing at small magnitude has a stabilizing effect, while strong stochastic forcing has a destabilizing effect. The methodology put forth in this article, which combines rigorous analysis with careful computation, also provides an approach to hydrodynamic stability for a variety of systems subject to a large scale stochastic forcing