Effect of phase noise on parametric instabilities.

We report an experimental study on the effect of an external phase noise on the parametric amplification of surface waves. We observe that both the instability growth rate and the wave amplitude above the instability onset are decreased in the presence of noise. We show that all the results can be understood with a deterministic amplitude equation for the wave in which the effect of noise is just to change the forcing term. All the data for the growth rate (respectively the wave amplitude), obtained for different forcing amplitudes and different intensities of the noise, can be collapsed on a single curve using this renormalized forcing in the presence of noise.