Formation and dynamics of many-boson fragmented states in one-dimensional attractive ultracold gases

The dynamics of attractive ultracold bosonic clouds in one dimension is studied by solving the many-particle time-dependent Schrodinger equation. The initially coherent wave packet can dynamically dissociate into two parts when its energy exceeds a threshold value. Noticeably, the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii theory does not show up the splitting. We call the split object fragmenton. It possesses remarkable properties; in particular, it is macroscopically fragmented. A simple static model predicts the existence of fragmented states responsible for the formation and dynamics of fragmentons.