Transverse instability of dark solitons in spin-orbit coupled polariton condensates

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability and dynamics of dark solitons in spin-orbit coupled polariton condensates, revealing different behaviors for symmetric and half-dark solitons and their evolution into vortex structures.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how spin-orbit coupling affects dark soliton stability and the resulting vortex patterns in polariton condensates, highlighting new instability scenarios.

Findings

One-dimensional dark solitons are generally unstable.

Half-dark solitons can be stable under certain conditions.

Two-dimensional solitons evolve into vortex-antivortex patterns.

Abstract

We consider dark solitons and their stability in spin-orbit coupled polariton condensates. The system supports spinor solitons of two types: conventional (symmetric) dark solitons and asymmetric half-dark solitons. They demonstrate essentially different behavior upon variation of the strength of spin-orbit coupling. One-dimensional spin-orbit coupled dark solitons are usually unstable, while half-dark solitons can be stable. Two-dimensional dark solitons at early stages of the development of transverse instabilities turn into asymmetric snaking patterns and later into sets of vortex-antivortex solitons with notably different shapes. Depending on the sign of spin-orbit coupling two distinct instability scenarios are possible for such solitons, in which vortices in one component correspond to vortices or antivortices in other component. The decay of two-dimensional half-dark solitons results in the formation of half-vortex chains.