Stability of traveling waves of nonlinear Schrödinger equation with nonzero condition at infinity

We study the stability of traveling waves of nonlinear Schrödinger equation with nonzero condition at infinity obtained via a constrained variational approach. Two important physical models are Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation and cubic-quintic equation. First, under a non-degeneracy condition we prove a sharp instability criterion for 3D traveling waves of (GP), which had been conjectured in the physical literature. This result is also extended for general nonlinearity and higher dimensions, including 4D (GP) and 3D cubic-quintic equations. Second, for cubic-quintic type nonlinearity, we construct slow traveling waves and prove their nonlinear instability in any dimension. For dimension two, the non-degeneracy condition is also proved for these slow traveling waves. For general traveling waves without vortices (i.e. nonvanishing) and with general nonlinearity in any dimension, we find a sharp condition for linear instability. Third, we prove that any 2D traveling wave of (GP) is transversally unstable and