We study the response of a semi-bounded one-component fully degenerate electron plasma to an initial perturbation in the electrostatic limit. We show that the part of the electric potential corresponding to surface waves in such plasma can be represe
nted, at large times, as the sum of two terms, one term corresponding to conventional (Langmuir) surface waves and the other term representing a new type of surface waves resulting from specific analytic properties of degenerate plasmas dielectric response function. These two terms are characterized by different oscillation frequencies (for a given wave number), and, while the conventional terms amplitude decays exponentially with time, the new term is characterized by a slower, power-law decay of the oscillation amplitude and is therefore dominant at large times.
Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in a semi-bounded degenerate plasma (e.g., a metal) are studied using the quasiclassical mean-field kinetic model, taking into account the spatial dispersion of the plasma (due to quantum degeneracy of electrons) and
electron-ion (electron-lattice, for metals) collisions. SPP dispersion and damping are obtained in both retarded ($omega/k_zsim c$) and non-retarded ($omega/k_zll c$) regions, as well as in between. It is shown that the plasma spatial dispersion significantly affects the properties of SPPs, especially at short wavelengths (less than the collisionless skin depth, $lambdalesssim c/omega_{pe}$). Namely, the collisionless (Landau) damping of SPPs (due to spatial dispersion) is comparable to the purely collisional (Ohmic) damping (due to electron-lattice collisions) in a wide range of SPP wavelengths, e.g., from $lambdasim20$ nm to $lambdasim0.8$ nm for SPP in gold at T=293 K, and from $lambdasim400$ nm to $lambdasim0.7$ nm for SPPs in gold at T=100 K. The spatial dispersion is also shown to affect, in a qualitative way, the dispersion of SPPs at short wavelengths $lambdalesssim c/omega_{pe}$.
Surface plasmons (SP) in a semi-bounded quantum plasma with degenerate electrons (e.g., a metal) is considered, and some interesting consequences of electron Pauli blocking for the SP dispersion and temporal attenuation are discussed. In particular,
it is demonstrated that a semi-bounded degenerate plasma with a sharp boundary supports two types of SP with distinct frequencies and qualitatively different temporal attenuation, in contrast to a non-degenerate plasma that only supports one type of SP citep{Guernsey_1969}.
