Stabilization of Solitons Generated by a Supersonic Flow of Bose-Einstein Condensate Past an Obstacle

Stability of dark solitons generated by a supersonic flow of Bose-Einstein condensate past an obstacle is investigated. It is shown that in the reference frame attached to the obstacle a transition occurs at some critical value of the flow velocity from absolute instability of dark solitons to their convective instability. This leads to decay of disturbances of solitons at fixed distance from the obstacle and formation of effectively stable dark solitons. This phenomenon explains surprising stability of the flow picture that has been observed in numerical simulations.