A Consistent Picture of a Collapsing Bose-Einstein Condensate

We present a consistent picture of the recent JILA experiments on the collapse of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) [E. A. Donley, et al., Nature 412, 295 (2001)] based on a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation that incorporates the effect of a three-body loss. The questions we address in this paper are: (1) Why does a BEC survive, albeit partially, after the collapse? (2) Why does the number of the remnant BEC atoms observed at JILA exceed the critical value? (3) What is the origin of the atom burst? (4) What is the origin of the atom jet and is it coherent? We review our predictions on pattern formation in the course of collapse and on the split instability of vortices that can test our collapsing theory.