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Stability and Dynamics of Cross Solitons in Harmonically Confined Bose-Einstein Condensates

We examine the stability and dynamics of a family of crossed dark solitons in a harmonically confined Bose-Einstein condensate in two dimensions. Working in a regime where the fundamental snake instability is suppressed, we show the existence of an instability which leads to an interesting collapse and revival of the initial state for the fundamental case of two crossed solitons. The instability originates from the singular point where the solitons cross, and we characterise it by examining the Bogoliubov spectrum. Finally, we extend the treatment to systems of higher symmetry.