Influence of self-affine and mound roughness on the surface impedance and skin depth of conductive materials Original Research Article

In this work, we explore the influence of self-affine and mound surface roughness on the surface impedance and skin depth. For self-affine roughness, the surface impedance and skin depth increases with decreasing the roughness exponent H (for kFξ≫1 with kF the Fermi wave-vector), and/or increasing roughness ratio w/ξ, where w is the rms roughness amplitude and ξ the in-plane roughness correlation length. For mound roughness, the surface impedance and skin depth decrease monotonically with increasing average mound separation λ when λ>ζ with ζ the correlation length (assuming kFζ≫1), while for λ<ζ they are both decreased with increasing λ.