Dark Solitons, Dispersive Shock Waves, and Transverse Instabilities

The nature of transverse instabilities of dark solitons for the (2+1)-dimensional defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger/Gross–Pitaevskĭi (NLS/GP) equation is considered. Special attention is given to the small (shallow) amplitude regime, which limits to the Kadomtsev–Petviashvili (KP) equation. We study analytically and numerically the eigenvalues of the linearized NLS/GP equation. The dispersion relation for shallow solitons is obtained asymptotically beyond the KP limit. This yields (1) the maximal growth rate and associated wavenumber of unstable perturbations and (2) the separatrix between convective and absolute instabilities. The instability properties of the dark soliton are directly related to those of oblique dispersive shock wave (DSW) solutions. Stationary and nonstationary oblique DSWs are constructed analytically and investigated numerically by direct simulations of the NLS/GP equation. It is found that stationary and nonstationary oblique DSWs have the same jump conditions in the shallow and hypersonic regimes. These results have application to controlling nonlinear waves in dispersive media.