Dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensate

Recently, Donley et al. performed an experiment on the dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensates by suddenly changing the scattering length of atomic interaction to a large negative value on a preformed repulsive condensate of Rb-85 atoms in an axially symmetric trap. Consequently, the condensate collapses and ejects atoms via explosions, We show that the accurate numerical solution of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation with axial symmetry can explain some aspects of the dynamics of the collapsing condensate. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier B.V. B.V.