Topological Langmuir-cyclotron wave

TL;DR

This paper develops a topological framework to describe the unidirectional Langmuir-Cyclotron wave in magnetized plasmas, revealing its origin as a spectral flow from Weyl points in phase space topology.

Contribution

It introduces a rigorous topological approach to plasma waves, connecting phase space topology with the existence of topological surface waves like TLCW.

Findings

TLCW propagates unidirectionally without scattering.

Spectral flow at Weyl points generates TLCW.

Analytical solution for tilted Dirac cone spectrum provided.

Abstract

A theoretical framework is developed to describe the Topological Langmuir-Cyclotron Wave (TLCW), a recently identified topological surface excitation in magnetized plasmas. As a topological wave, the TLCW propagates unidirectionally without scattering in complex boundaries. The TLCW is studied theoretically as a spectral flow of the Hamiltonian Pseudo-Differential-Operator (PDO) $\hat{H}$ for waves in an inhomogeneous plasma. The semi-classical parameter of the Weyl quantization for plasma waves is identified to be the ratio between electron gyro-radius and the inhomogeneity scale length of the system. Hermitian eigenmode bundles of the bulk Hamiltonian symbol H for plasma waves are formally defined. Because momentum space in classical continuous media is contractible in general, the topology of the eigenmode bundles over momentum space is trivial. This is in stark contrast to condensed matters. Nontrivial topology of the eigenmode bundles in classical continuous media only exists over phase space. A boundary isomorphism theorem is established to facilitate the calculation of Chern numbers of eigenmode bundles over non-contractible manifolds in phase space. It also defines a topological charge of an isolated Weyl point in phase space without adopting any connection. Using these algebraic topological techniques and an index theorem formulated by Faure, it is rigorously proven that the nontrivial topology at the Weyl point of the Langmuir wave-cyclotron wave resonance generates the TLCW as a spectral flow. It is shown that the TLCW can be faithfully modeled by a tilted Dirac cone in phase space. An analytical solution of the entire spectrum of the PDO of a generic tilted phase space Dirac cone, including its spectral flow, is given. The spectral flow index of a tilted Dirac cone is one, and its mode structure is a shifted Gaussian function.