Potential (electrostatic) surface waves in plasma half-space with degenerate
electrons are studied using the quasi-classical mean-field kinetic model. The
wave spectrum and the collisionless damping rate are obtained numerically for a
wide range of wavelengths. In the limit of long wavelengths, the wave frequency
ω approaches the cold-plasma limit ω=ωp/2 with
ωp being the plasma frequency, while at short wavelengths, the wave
spectrum asymptotically approaches the spectrum of zero-sound mode propagating
along the boundary. It is shown that the surface waves in this system remain
weakly damped at all wavelengths (in contrast to strongly damped surface waves
in Maxwellian electron plasmas), and the damping rate nonmonotonically depends
on the wavelength, with the maximum (yet small) damping occuring for surface
waves with wavelength of ≈5πλF, where λF is the
Thomas-Fermi length.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure