Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

A variational basis set motivated by mean-field theory is utilized to describe the Bose-Einstein condensate within the adiabatic hyperspherical coordinate framework. The simplest single-orbital variant of this treatment reproduces many of the ground state properties predicted by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. But a multi-orbital improvement to the basis set yields a better representation of particle correlations and of the critical number where the condensate collapses for a negative two-body scattering length. The method also produces systematic deviations from Bogoliubov theory for the fundamental monopole excitation frequency.