case, a deviation from the equilibrium most probably takes place in the core, as because of its compactness, its equilibration with the rest of the system may take a rather long time. Using the current MD setup, we were unable to determine a reason for this apparent discrepancy.

CONCLUSION
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In the previous sections we have presented the following molecular dynamics results for the self-attracting systems with soft Coulomb potential:

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A collapse from a uniform to a core-halo state was observed. The timescale for the collapse in systems consisting of 125 – 500 particles is of order of $10^5$ crossing times and is by the same factor longer than the timescale of the velocity relaxation. The collapse starts with a fast growth of a core via absorption of single particles and continues with more gradual relaxation towards an equilibrium core-halo state. Metastable states exhibit a finite lifetime before collapsing.

A reverse to collapse, i.e., an explosion transition from a core-halo to a

uniform state was observed. The explosion time is considerably shorter than the collapse time, being of the order of $10^4$ crossing times (125 – 500 particles). An explosion resembles a time-reversed collapse; the core decrease, which 