Direct perturbation theory for dark-bright solitons: Application to Bose-Einstein condensates

We develop a direct perturbation theory for dark-bright solitons and derive evolution equations for the soliton parameters. In particular, first the linearization equation around the solitons is solved by expanding its solution into a set of complete eigenfunctions of the linearization operator. Then, suppression of secular growth in the linearized solution leads to the evolution equations of soliton parameters. The results are applied to a number of case examples motivated by the physics of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, where dark-bright solitons have recently been studied both in theory and in experiments. We thus consider perturbations corresponding to (a) finite temperature-induced thermal losses, and (b) the presence of localized (δ-function) impurities. In these cases, relevant equations of motion for the dark-bright soliton center are in agreement with ones previously obtained via alternative methods, including energy-based methods, as well as numerical linear stability analysis and direct simulations. (paper)