Deformation of dark solitons in inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

A dark soliton becomes unstable when it is incident on a background density gradient, and the induced instability results in the emission of sound. Detailed quantitative studies of sound emission are performed for various potentials, such as steps, linear ramps and gaussian traps. The amount of sound emission is found to be a significant fraction of the soliton energy for typical potentials. Continuous emission of sound is found to lead to an apparent deformation of the soliton profile. The power emitted by the soliton is shown to be parametrised by the square of the displacement of the centre of mass of the soliton from its density minimum, thus highlighting the significance of the inhomogeneity-induced soliton deformation.