  We present a new approach for the analysis of Bose-Einstein condensates in a
few mode approximation. This method has already been used to successfully
analyze the vibrational modes in various molecular systems and offers a new
perspective on the dynamics in many particle bosonic systems. We discuss a
system consisting of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a triple well potential.
Such systems correspond to classical Hamiltonian systems with three degrees of
freedom. The semiclassical approach allows a simple visualization of the
eigenstates of the quantum system referring to the underlying classical
dynamics. From this classification we can read off the dynamical properties of
the eigenstates such as particle exchange between the wells and entanglement
without further calculations. In addition, this approach offers new insights
into the validity of the mean-field description of the many particle system by
the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, since we make use of exactly this correspondence
in our semiclassical analysis. We choose a three mode system in order to
visualize it easily and, moreover, to have a sufficiently interesting
structure, although the method can also be extended to higher dimensional
systems.
