Phys. Rev. A 66, 013611 (2002) [8 pages]Mean-field description of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensatesReceived 4 February 2002; revised 21 March 2002; published 19 July 2002 We perform numerical simulations based on the time-dependent mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation to understand some aspects of a recent experiment by Donley et al. [Nature (London) 412, 295 (2001)] on the dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensates of 85Rb atoms. These authors manipulated the atomic interaction by an external magnetic field via a Feshbach resonance, thus changing the repulsive condensate into an attractive one, and vice versa. In the actual experiment they suddenly changed the scattering length of atomic interaction from a positive to a large negative value on a preformed condensate in an axially symmetric trap. Consequently, the condensate collapsed and ejected atoms via explosion. We find that the present mean-field analysis can explain some aspects of the dynamics of the collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensates. © 2002 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.66.013611
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.66.013611
PACS:
03.75.Fi
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