The dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensates caused by a sudden switch of interactions from repulsive to attractive are studied by numerically integrating the Gross-Pitaevskii equation with atomic loss for an axially symmetric trap. We investigate the decay rate of condensates and the phenomena of bursts and jets of atoms, and compare our results with those of the experiments performed by E. A. Donley et al. [Nature (London) 412, 295 (2001)]. Our study suggests that the condensate decay and the burst production is due to local intermittent implosions in the condensate, and that atomic clouds of bursts and jets are coherent. We also predict nonlinear pattern formation caused by the density instability of attractive condensates.
The critical behavior of collective modes and the collapsing dynamics of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates with attractive interactions are studied analytically and numerically. The time scales of these dynamics both below and above the critical point of the collapse are found to obey power laws with a single parameter of ${N/N}_{c}\ensuremath{-}1,$ where N is the number of condensate atoms and
Nc is the critical number. The collapsing condensate eventually undergoes rapid implosion, which occurs several times intermittently, and then the implosion turns to an explosion. The release energy of the explosion is found to be proportional to the square of the interaction strength, inversely proportional to the three-body recombination rate, and independent of the number of condensate atoms and the trap frequency.