Landau Damping of Surface Plasma Waves

ABSTRACT

The integral of the kinetic electrostatic surface wave dispersion relation is asymptotically evaluated to determine the frequencies of the normal modes and the corresponding Landau damping for the high frequency surface electron plasma wave and the low frequency surface ion acoustic wave. The asymptotically calculated Landau damping rates apply to the limiting cases of kxλe << 1 and kx λe >> 1 where kx is the wavenumber and λ e is the electron Debye length. We also calculate Landau damping rate of the transverse magnetic (TM) mode surface wave.