Stability of dark screening solitons in photorefractive media

Biased photorefractive media are known to admit bright and dark solitons. The bright solitons in these media are always stable, but their dark counterparts are unstable above a certain background intensity and below a critical velocity. We use the stability criterion and the Vakhitov–Kolokolov function to precisely determine the unstable-parameter region. We also predict the strength of the instability by determining the unstable eigenvalues and eigenmodes using the Evans function method. Numerical simulation of the full evolution equation confirms the results.