Motion of Dark Solitons in Trapped Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract

We use a multiple time scale boundary layer theory to derive the equation of motion for a dark (or grey) soliton propagating through an effectively one-dimensional cloud of Bose-Einstein condensate, assuming only that the background density and velocity vary slowly on the soliton scale. We show that solitons can exhibit viscous or radiative acceleration (antidamping), which we estimate as slow but observable on experimental time scales.