  We study the decay of a dark soliton in a homogeneous Bose-Einstein
condensate. We give an analytical treatment of a decaying soliton, deriving an
expression for the soliton velocity and decay time in the absence of thermal
noise. We test the result against numerical simulations of a spatially confined
system and find good agreement in the regime of low temperature ($k_BT\ll
\mu$). Thermal fluctuations are found to slow the escape of the soliton,
extending its lifetime beyond the predictions of the noise-free theory; the
effect becomes significant at a characteristic temperature $k_BT\sim \mu$. This
stabilization by noise allows us to infer an analytical lower bound for the
dark soliton decay time.
