Abstract
The effects of a random magnetic potential in a microfabricated waveguide for ultracold atoms were analyzed. It was shown that the shape and position fluctuations of a current carrying wire induce a strong Gaussian correlated random potential with a length scale set by the atom-wire separation. The observed fragmentation of the Bose-Einstein condensates in atomic waveguides was quantitatively explained by the theory. The results show that nonlinear dynamics can be used to provide important insights into the nature of the strongly fragmented condensates.