Thin-Film Flow Influenced by Thermal Noise

We study the influence of thermal fluctuations on the dewetting dynamics of thin liquid films. Starting from the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with thermal noise, we derive a fourth-order degenerate parabolic stochastic partial differential equation which includes a conservative, multiplicative noise term—the stochastic thin-film equation. Technically, we rely on a long-wave-approximation and Fokker–Planck-type arguments. We formulate a discretization method and give first numerical evidence for our conjecture that thermal fluctuations are capable of accelerating film rupture and that discrepancies with respect to time-scales between physical experiments and deterministic numerical simulations can be resolved by taking noise effects into account.