Landau dynamics of a grey soliton in a trapped condensate

Abstract

It is shown that grey soliton dynamics in an one-dimensional trap can be treated as Landau dynamics of a quasi-particle. A soliton of arbitrary amplitude moves in the trapping potential without deformation of its density profile as a particle of mass $2m$. The dynamics in the local density approximation is shown to be consistent with the perturbation theory for dark solitons. Dynamics of a vortex ring in a trap is discussed qualitatively.