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 (anti-damping), which we estimate as slow but observable on experimental time scales.