Landau Dynamics of a Grey Soliton in a Trapped Condensate

It is shown that grey soliton dynamics in a one-dimensional trap can be treated within the framework of the local density approximation as Landau dynamics of a quasiparticle. A soliton of arbitrary amplitude moves in the trapping potential without deformation of its density profile as a particle of mass $2m$. The dynamics in the local density approximation is shown to be consistent with the perturbation theory for dark solitons. Dynamics of a vortex ring in a trap is discussed qualitatively.