  Dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates in triple-well potentials are well-suited
model systems for periodic optical potentials with important contributions of
the non-local and anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction, which show a variety
of effects such as self-organisation and formation of patterns. We address here
a macroscopic sample of dipolar bosons in the mean-field limit. This work is
based on the Gross-Pitaevskii description of dipolar condensates in triple-well
potentials by Peter et al 2012 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 45 225302. Our
analysis goes beyond the calculation of ground states presented there and
clarifies the role of excited and metastable states in such systems. In
particular, we find the formation of phases originating from the interplay of
several states with distinct stability properties. As some of the phases are
formed by metastable states special attention is paid to the characteristics of
phase transitions in real-time and the dynamical stabilisation of the
condensate.
