  The spontaneous formation of droplets via dewetting of a thin fluid film from
a solid substrate allows for materials nanostructuring, under appropriate
experimental control. While thermal fluctuations are expected to play a role in
this process, their relevance has remained poorly understood, particularly
during the nonlinear stages of evolution. Within a stochastic lubrication
framework, we show that thermal noise speeds up and substantially influences
the formation and evolution of the droplet arrangement. As compared with their
deterministic counterparts, for a fixed spatial domain, stochastic systems
feature a smaller number of droplets, with a larger variability in sizes and
space distribution. Finally, we discuss the influence of stochasticity on
droplet coarsening for very long times.
