Stability and instability of the quasilinear Gross--Pitaevskii dark solitons

Abstract

We study a quasilinear Schrödinger equation with nonzero conditions at infinity. In previous works, we obtained a continuous branch of traveling waves, given by dark solitons indexed by their speed. Neglecting the quasilinear term, one recovers the Gross--Pitaevskii equation, for which the branch of dark solitons is stable. Moreover, Z.~Lin showed that the Vakhitov--Kolokolov~(VK) stability criterion (in terms of the momentum of solitons) holds for general semilinear equations with nonvanishing conditions at infinity. In the quasilinear case, we prove that the VK stability criterion still applies, by generalizing Lin's arguments. Therefore, we deduce that the branch of dark solitons is stable for weak quasilinear interactions. For stronger quasilinear interactions, a cusp appears in the energy-momentum diagram, implying the stability of fast waves and the instability of slow waves.