Equatorial magnetoplasma waves

TL;DR

This paper explores the existence of equatorial magnetoplasma waves in two-dimensional electron gases under magnetic fields, drawing parallels to Earth's equatorial waves and highlighting their robustness and potential experimental realizations.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of equatorial magnetoplasma waves in 2D electron systems, linking topological effects to wave robustness and analyzing geometric influences.

Findings

Equatorial magnetoplasma waves exist in 2D electron gases with magnetic fields.

Robustness of these waves is due to destructive interference effects.

Experimental setups with topological insulators or metal-coated dielectrics are proposed.

Abstract

Due to its rotation, Earth traps a few equatorial ocean and atmospheric waves, including Kelvin, Yanai, Rossby, and Poincare modes. It has been recently demonstrated that the mathematical origin of equatorial waves is intricately related to the nontrivial topology of hydrodynamic equations describing oceans or the atmosphere. In the present work, we consider plasma oscillations supported by a two-dimensional electron gas confined at the surface of a sphere or a cylinder. We argue that in the presence of a uniform magnetic field, these systems host a set of equatorial magnetoplasma waves that are counterparts to the equatorial waves trapped by Earth. For a spherical geometry, the equatorial modes are well developed only if their penetration length is smaller than the radius of the sphere. For a cylindrical geometry, the spectrum of equatorial modes is weakly dependent on the cylinder radius and overcomes finite-size effects. We argue that this exceptional robustness can be explained by destructive interference effects. We discuss possible experimental setups, including grains and rods composed of topological insulators (e.g., Bi2Se3) or metal-coated dielectrics (e.g., Au2S).