We have analyzed the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with a stochastic noise term through a dynamic renormalization-group calculation. For a system in which the lattice spacing is smaller than the typical wavelength of the linear instability occurring in the system, the large distance and long-time behavior of this equation is the same as for the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation in one and two spatial dimensions. For the d=2 case the agreement is only qualitative. On the other hand, when coarse graining on larger scales the asymptotic flow depends on the initial values of the parameters.

• Received 5 May 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.52.4853