Explosion of a Collapsing Bose-Einstein Condensate

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