Oscillations of dark solitons in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates

We consider a one-dimensional defocusing Gross-Pitaevskii equation with a parabolic potential. Dark solitons oscillate near a center of the potential trap and their amplitude decays due to radiative losses (sound emission). We develop a systematic asymptotic multiscale expansion method in the limit when the potential trap is flat. The first-order approximation predicts a uniform frequency of oscillations for the dark soliton of arbitrary amplitude. The second-order approximation predicts the nonlinear growth rate of the oscillation amplitude, which results in decay of the dark soliton. The results are compared with previous publications and numerical computations. © 2005 The American Physical Society