Stabilization of ring dark solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates

Earlier work has shown that ring dark solitons in two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates are generically unstable. In this work, we propose a way of stabilizing the ring dark soliton via a radial Gaussian external potential. We investigate the existence and stability of the ring dark soliton upon variations of the chemical potential and also of the strength of the radial potential. Numerical results show that the ring dark soliton can be stabilized in a suitable interval of external potential strengths and chemical potentials. Furthermore, we also explore different proposed particle pictures considering the ring as a moving particle and find, where appropriate, results in very good qualitative and also reasonable quantitative agreement with the numerical findings.