Onset of transverse instabilities of confined dark solitons

We investigate propagating dark soliton solutions of the two-dimensional defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger or Gross-Pitaevskii (NLS-GP) equation that are transversely confined to propagate in an infinitely long channel. Families of single, vortex, and multilobed solitons are computed using a spectrally accurate numerical scheme. The multilobed solitons are unstable to small transverse perturbations. However, the single-lobed solitons are stable if they are sufficiently confined along the transverse direction, which explains their effective one-dimensional dynamics. The emergence of a transverse modulational instability is characterized in terms of a spectral bifurcation. The critical confinement width for this bifurcation is found to coincide with the existence of a propagating vortex solution and the onset of a “snaking” instability in the dark soliton dynamics that, in turn, give rise to vortex or multivortex excitations. These results shed light on the superfluidic hydrodynamics of dispersive shock waves in Bose-Einstein condensates and nonlinear optics.