  To show a mechanism leading to the breakdown of a particle picture for the
multi-component Bose-Einstein condensates(BECs) with a harmonic trap in high
dimensions, we investigate the corresponding 2-$d$ nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger
equation (Gross-Pitaevskii equation) with use of a modified variational
principle. A molecule of two identical Gaussian wavepackets has two degrees of
freedom(DFs), the separation of center-of-masses and the wavepacket width.
Without the inter-component interaction(ICI) these DFs show independent regular
oscillations with the degenerate eigen-frequencies. The inclusion of ICI
strongly mixes these DFs, generating a fat mode that breaks a particle picture,
which however can be recovered by introducing a time-periodic ICI with zero
average. In case of the molecule of three wavepackets for a three-component
BEC, the increase of amplitude of ICI yields a transition from regular to
chaotic oscillations in the wavepacket breathing.

Other Condensed Matter;Soft Condensed Matter