Instability of a strongly inhomogeneous plasma

Abstract

The stability of a plasma boundary in the presence of a powerful p-polarized electromagnetic wave is studied. It is shown that surface waves that are coupled to plasmons localized in the plasma-vacuum transition layer can be excited. The growth rate that is calculated turns out to be larger than the corresponding value obtained without taking nonlocal effects of the transition layer into account by a factor proportional to the wavelength of the pump wave divided by the width of the boundary region. The threshold is accordingly significantly lower. We believe that the present theory will be useful for the explanation of several nonlocal optical effects arising near the surface of solid-state plasmas.