A hyperspherical approach to dipolar droplets*

We apply a hyperspherical formulation to a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. Central to this approach is a general correspondence between K-harmonic hyperspherical methods and a suitable Gaussian ansatz to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, regardless of the form of the interparticle potential. In the case of the dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate, this motivates the inclusion of a beyond-mean field term within the hyperspherical picture, which allows us to describe the energies and wavefunctions of excitations of self-bound dipolar droplets outside of the mean-field limit. This approach provides a regime for exploring transitions between the liquid and gas phases.