Explosion of a Collapsing Bose-Einstein Condensate

Abstract

we show that elastic collisions between atoms in an Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interactions lead to an explosion that ejects a large fraction of the collapsing condensate. We study variationally the dynamics of thes explosion and find excellent agreement with recent experiments on magnetically trapped 85-Rb. We also determine the energy and angular distribution of the ejected atoms during the collapse.