Dark solitons, dispersive shock waves, and transverse instabilities

Abstract: The nature of transverse instabilities to dark solitons and dispersive shock waves for the (2+1)-dimensional defocusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation / Gross-Pitaevskii (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 maximum growth rate and associated wavenumber of unstable perturbations; and 2) the separatrix between convective and absolute instabilities. The latter result is used to study the transition between convective and absolute instabilities of oblique dispersive shock waves (DSWs). Stationary and nonstationary oblique DSWs are constructed analytically and investigated numerically by direct simulations of the NLS / GP equation. The instability properties of oblique DSWs are found to be directly related to those of the dark soliton. 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.