ELECTRON SURFACE-WAVES IN A PLASMA SLAB WITH UNIFORM ION DENSITY

Electron surface waves in a metal bound plasma slab have been detected and analyzed. In this work it is shown that the presence of a matrix sheath between the central quasineutral region and the metal walls all ows for the propagation of surface waves analogous to those found in d ielectric bound plasmas. Measurements of the dispersion relations and eigenfunctions of asymmetric and symmetric, electrostatic, surface, an d body waves are made via particle-in-cell simulation of a plasma slab with sheaths. The plasma slab has finite temperature electrons and fi xed ions of uniform density. The sheaths consist of electron free, fix ed, uniform ion regions (''matrix sheath'') of thickness similar to la mbda(De). A linearized Vlasov theory is developed for comparison with the simulation. It is shown that the long wavelength approximation (k lambda(De) much less than 1) is not valid even for long wavelengths in the propagation direction. Collisionless damping of both surface and body waves is measured which compares well with theoretical estimates. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.