Electrodynamic trapping of charged particles in a monopole field

Abstract

While the widely used electrodynamic quadrupole traps are based on the dynamic stabilization around a field minimum, we demonstrate here the trapping of charged particles close to a maximum of the electric field. In the experiment charged steel spheres are trapped in the monopole potential of a tip electrode using a combination of static and alternating voltages. As a periodically driven nonlinear oscillator this system might show chaotic dynamics. A period doubling bifurcation was observed experimentally.