Stochastic Acceleration of Solitons for the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation

The effective dynamics of solitons for the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation in a random potential is rigorously studied. It is shown that when the external potential varies slowly in space compared to the size of the soliton, the dynamics of the center of the soliton is almost surely described by Hamilton’s equations for a classical particle in the random potential, plus error terms due to radiation damping. Furthermore, a limit theorem for the dynamics of the center of mass of the soliton in the weak-coupling and spaceadiabatic limit is proven in two and higher dimensions: Under certain mixing hypotheses for the potential, the momentum of the center of mass of the soliton converges in law to a diffusion process on a sphere of constant momentum. Moreover, in three and higher dimensions, the trajectory of the center of mass of the soliton converges to a spatial Brownian motion.