Spontaneous and explicit parity-time-symmetry breaking in drift-wave instabilities.

A method of parity-time- (PT) symmetry analysis is introduced to study the high-dimensional, complicated parameter space of drift-wave instabilities. We show that spontaneous PT-symmetry breaking leads to the ion temperature gradient instability of drift waves, and the collisional instability is the result of explicit PT-symmetry breaking. A new unstable drift wave induced by finite collisionality is identified. It is also found that gradients of ion temperature and density can destabilize the ion cyclotron waves when PT symmetry is explicitly broken by a finite collisionality.