Spin Hall effect of radiofrequency waves in magnetized plasmas

Abstract

In inhomogeneous media, electromagnetic-wave rays deviate from the trajectories predicted by the leading-order geometrical optics. This effect, called the spin Hall effect of light, is typically neglected in ray-tracing codes used for modeling waves in plasmas. Here, we demonstrate that the spin Hall effect can be significant for radiofrequency waves in toroidal magnetized plasmas whose parameters are in the ballpark of those used in fusion experiments. For example, an electron-cyclotron wave beam can deviate by as large as ten wavelengths ($\sim 0.1\text{m}$) relative to the lowest-order ray trajectory in the poloidal direction. We calculate this displacement using gauge-invariant ray equations of extended geometrical optics, and we also compare our theoretical predictions with full-wave simulations.

References in corpus (5)

• Conservation of Angular Momentum, Transverse Shift, and Spin Hall Effect in Reflection and Refraction of Electromagnetic Wave Packet
• Geometrodynamics of Spinning Light
• Topological Langmuir-cyclotron wave
• The dispersion and propagation of topological Langmuir-cyclotron waves in cold magnetized plasmas
• Mode conversion in cold low-density plasma with a sheared magnetic field

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Photon topology
• Wave Topology in Hall MHD