  The noisy Burgers equation describing for example the growth of an interface
subject to noise is one of the simplest model governing an intrinsically
nonequilibrium problem. In one dimension this equation is analyzed by means of
the Martin-Siggia-Rose technique. In a canonical formulation the morphology and
scaling behavior are accessed by a principle of least action in the weak noise
limit. The growth morphology is characterized by a dilute gas of nonlinear
soliton modes with gapless dispersion law with exponent z=3/2 and a superposed
gas of diffusive modes with a gap. The scaling exponents and a heuristic
expression for the scaling function follow from a spectral representation.
