  We study the effects of a position-dependent artificial gauge field on an
atomic Bose--Einstein condensate in quasi-one-dimensional and two-dimensional
ring settings. The inhomogeneous artificial gauge field can induce global and
local currents in the Bose--Einstein condensate via phase gradients along the
ring and vortices, respectively. We observe two different regimes in the system
depending on the radial size of the ring and strength of the gauge field. For
weak artificial gauge fields, the angular momentum increases, as expected, in a
quantized manner; however, for stronger values of the fields, the angular
momentum exhibits a linear (non-quantized) behavior. We also characterize the
angular momentum for non-cylindrically symmetric traps.
