  We examine the effects of pure additive noise on spatially extended systems
with quadratic nonlinearities. We develop a general multiscale theory for such
systems and apply it to the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation as a case study. We
first focus on a regime close to the instability onset (primary bifurcation),
where the system can be described by a single dominant mode. We show
analytically that the resulting noise in the equation describing the amplitude
of the dominant mode largely depends on the nature of the stochastic forcing.
For a highly degenerate noise, in the sense that it is acting on the first
stable mode only, the amplitude equation is dominated by a pure multiplicative
noise, which in turn induces the dominant mode to undergo several critical
state transitions and complex phenomena, including intermittency and
stabilisation, as the noise strength is increased. The intermittent behaviour
is characterised by a power-law probability density and the corresponding
critical exponent is calculated rigorously by making use of the first-passage
properties of the amplitude equation. On the other hand, when the noise is
acting on the whole subspace of stable modes, the multiplicative noise is
corrected by an additive-like term, with the eventual loss of any stabilised
state. We also show that the stochastic forcing has no effect on the dominant
mode dynamics when it is acting on the second stable mode. Finally, in a regime
which is relatively far from the instability onset, so that there are two
unstable modes, we observe numerically that when the noise is acting on the
first stable mode, both dominant modes show noise-induced complex phenomena
similar to the single-mode case.
