Snake instability and vortex pair

Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the concept of snake instability in dark solitons, particularly in the context of higher dimensions and its implications in physics, including potential observations in Bose-Einstein condensates. Participants explore the nature of this instability, its mechanisms, and related literature.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested
  • Mathematical reasoning

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants describe snake instability as a phenomenon where a dark soliton in two dimensions decays into quantized vortex pairs due to phase changes and curvature.
  • Others reference literature, such as J. Brand's work, discussing transverse modulational instability and its unclear implications in physics.
  • One participant suggests consulting Kivshar's book on optical solitons for a deeper understanding of transverse modulation instability, although it may not directly address the initial query.
  • A participant shares a paper that studies methods to suppress the instability of dark soliton stripes, noting visual representations of "snakes."
  • Another participant expresses confusion regarding the interpretation of the instability in the referenced paper, particularly concerning long wavelength perturbation modes and their suppression.
  • Concerns are raised about the classification of soliton structures in the paper, questioning the nature of dark versus bright solitons based on the background values presented.
  • Discussion includes a technical inquiry about the eigenvalues of a specific operator in the context of linear stability analysis, with emphasis on the implications of their positivity.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express varying levels of understanding and interpretation of snake instability, with no consensus reached on its precise nature or implications. Multiple competing views and interpretations remain present throughout the discussion.

Contextual Notes

Some participants note limitations in their understanding of transverse modulational instability and the specific mathematical derivations related to eigenvalues, indicating potential gaps in the literature or personal comprehension.

Pring
Messages
47
Reaction score
0
Dark soliton is a general phynomenon in broad physics subjects. In higher dimensions, dark soliton exhibits instable except one special kind as vortex. The fundamental instability of a single dark soliton in two dimensions is to eventually decay into a number of quantized vortics through what is called the snake instability. The problem is that: what the snake instability exactly means? Someone say when the soliton in one dimension going to second dimension, due to the phase change, the dark soliton will be bend, if the curvature is large enough, the dark soliton will be split into vortex-antivortex pair. I don't know how phase change plays a role?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
From the abstract of Svortices and the fundamental modes of the “snake instability”: Possibility of observation in the gaseous Bose–Einstein Condensate, article of J. Brand: ... where soliton stripes are subject to a transverse modulational instability known as the "snake instability".
 
soarce said:
From the abstract of Svortices and the fundamental modes of the “snake instability”: Possibility of observation in the gaseous Bose–Einstein Condensate, article of J. Brand: ... where soliton stripes are subject to a transverse modulational instability known as the "snake instability".
Thank your, I am reading the paper which you have mentioned, but I think the transverse modulational instability is not clear enough in physic.
 
We are talking about solitons. Before anything else maybe you should reffer to Kivshar's book Optical Solitons: From fibers to photonic crystalls section 9.7 Transverse modulation instability.LE: The section 9.7 addresses the vector solitons, maybe is not what your were looking for.

LE2: I think that you should try to read some standard book/material on solitons which deals with the instabilities. When you have any doubt you can bring into discussion the referrence which you study.
 
Last edited:
I found this paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.3060.pdf where they study how to suppress the instability of dark soliton stripes, one can see some snakes in their pictures :)
I hope it helps.
 
Thank you for your detailed suggestion. The paper confused me is added underlying. Instability part is read past, maybe I should read it again.:D
 

Attachments

I had a quick look at the paper you posted. Indeed, it can be misleading when they speak of snake instability. I think that, generally, snake instability is releated mainly with long wavelength perturbation modes which they suppress in they set-up by adjusting the scattering length g. Probably, the "snake perturbation" of more complex soliton structures doesn't have an intuitive behaviour or visual interpretation, e.g. curves the soliton stripe and turns it into a "snake".

The structures they study in this article seems to me to be more like quadrupole or multipole solitons, in figure 1 the dark blue background stands for zero or for non-zero value? If it is zero then it is improper to speak of dark solitons, they would have bright solitons. Then they perform standard linear stability analysis and found that beside the snake instability there exists other one(s). This result is of no surprize, the multipole soliton structures are highly unstable.
 
soarce said:
I found this paper http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.3060.pdf where they study how to suppress the instability of dark soliton stripes, one can see some snakes in their pictures :)
I hope it helps.
Thank you. In this paper, why the eigenvalue of L should be positive in the formula (A10)?
 
In this case the operator ##L## is hermitian (diagonal form with real numbers) and its eigenvalues are real, where did they say that the eigenvalues are positive? It may have all eigenvalues positive and this implies that all perturbation modes are either growing or suppressed (depending on the sign convention in the paper), or oscillatory (depending on the real and imaginary part convention of the eigenvalue of the linear perturbation mode), I need to check the derivation of their equations.
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 21 ·
Replies
21
Views
4K
  • · Replies 62 ·
3
Replies
62
Views
12K
  • · Replies 11 ·
Replies
11
Views
5K
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
4K
  • · Replies 3 ·
Replies
3
Views
3K
  • · Replies 21 ·
Replies
21
Views
6K
  • · Replies 12 ·
Replies
12
Views
3K
  • Poll Poll
  • · Replies 17 ·
Replies
17
Views
7K
Replies
26
Views
9K
Replies
6
Views
4K