We investigate the stability and dynamics of the orbital angular momentum modes of a repulsive Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in two tunnel-coupled rings in a stack configuration. Within mean-field theory, we derive a two-state model for the system in the case in which we populate both rings equally with a single orbital angular momentum mode and include small perturbations in other modes. Analyzing the fixed-point solutions of the model and the associated classical Hamiltonian, we characterize the destabilization of the stationary states and the subsequent dynamics. By populating a single orbital angular momentum mode with an arbitrary population imbalance between the rings, we derive analytically the boundary between the regimes of Josephson oscillations and macroscopic quantum self-trapping and study numerically the stability of these solutions.

• Received 17 January 2020
• Accepted 9 July 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.102.023331