Analysis of azimuthal magnetorotational instability of rotating magnetohydrodynamic flows and Tayler instability via an extended Hain-Lüst equation.

We consider a differentially rotating flow of an incompressible electrically conducting and viscous fluid subject to an external axial magnetic field and to an azimuthal magnetic field that is allowed to be generated by a combination of an axial electric current external to the fluid and electrical currents in the fluid itself. In this setting we derive an extended version of the celebrated Hain-Lüst differential equation for the radial Lagrangian displacement that incorporates the effects of the axial and azimuthal magnetic fields, differential rotation, viscosity, and electrical resistivity. We apply the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin method to the extended Hain-Lüst equation and derive a comprehensive dispersion relation for the local stability analysis of the flow to three-dimensional disturbances. We confirm that in the limit of low magnetic Prandtl numbers, in which the ratio of the viscosity to the magnetic diffusivity is vanishing, the rotating flows with radial distributions of the angular velocity beyond the Liu limit, become unstable subject to a wide variety of the azimuthal magnetic fields, and so is the Keplerian flow. In the analysis of the dispersion relation we find evidence of a new long-wavelength instability which is caught also by the numerical solution of the boundary value problem for a magnetized Taylor-Couette flow.

Stabilizing and destabilizing perturbations of PT-symmetric indefinitely damped systems.

Eigenvalues of a potential dynamical system with damping forces that are described by an indefinite real symmetric matrix can behave as those of a Hamiltonian system when gain and loss are in a perfect balance. This happens when the indefinitely damped system obeys parity-time ( ) symmetry. How do pure imaginary eigenvalues of a stable -symmetric indefinitely damped system behave when variation in the damping and potential forces destroys the symmetry? We establish that it is essentially the tangent cone to the stability domain at the exceptional point corresponding to the Whitney umbrella singularity on the stability boundary that manages transfer of instability between modes.

Exceptional points in a microwave billiard with time-reversal invariance violation.

We report on the experimental study of an exceptional point (EP) in a dissipative microwave billiard with induced time-reversal invariance (T) violation. The associated two-state Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian and nonsymmetric. It is determined experimentally on a narrow grid in a parameter plane around the EP. At the EP the size of T violation is given by the relative phase of the eigenvector components. The eigenvectors are adiabatically transported around the EP, whereupon they gather geometric phases and in addition geometric amplitudes different from unity.