2023/06/22 by Horsley, S. A. R., Dwivedi, A.
#FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.12808
Whereas electromagnetic surface waves are confined to a planar interface between two media, line waves exist at the one-dimensional interface between three materials. Here we derive a non-local integral equation for computing the properties of line waves, valid for surfaces characterised in terms of a general tensorial impedance. We find a good approximation -- in many cases -- is to approximate this as a local differential equation, where line waves are one-dimensional analogues of surface plasmons bound to a spatially dispersive metal. For anisotropic surfaces we find the oscillating decay of recently discovered `ghost' line waves can be explained in terms of an effective gauge field induced by the surface anisotropy. These findings are validated using finite element simulations.