Ion Acoustic Surface Waves in a Degenerate Plasma

Abstract

The dispersion curves, the growth and damping rates of the ion acoustic surface waves of the semi-bounded plasma composed of fully degenerate zero-temperature electrons and cold streaming ions are investigated. The two modes of the ion acoustic surface waves are found, the dispersion curves, the growth and damping rates for each mode are obtained. The investigations on the growth and damping rates show that `high-frequency' mode relates to the decaying wave and `low-frequency' mode relates to the unstable wave. The growth and damping rates increase as the streaming velocity(Vi) of the ions increases, decrease as the Fermi velocity(VFe) of an electron increases except for a small wave number region.