Fig. 1: Principle of auto-ponderomotive guiding.
From: Charged particle guiding and beam splitting with auto-ponderomotive potentials on a chip
a When a beam of charged particles with velocity vz (green arrow) is injected into a structure consisting of electrostatic electrodes with spatially periodic voltages, the charged particle beam will be subjected to the equivalent transverse restoring force as charged particles in a linear electrodynamic trap with the same geometry, but with unsegmented electrodes as shown in b. This is because the spatially periodic electrostatic quadrupole field with period length LP leads to an alternating field with the periodicity TP = LP/vz in the rest frame of the moving particles (c). Like in a linear Paul trap, the charged particles experience a time-averaged harmonic pseudopotential, the ponderomotive potential, resulting in a restoring force towards the centerline. d The pseudopotential Ψ of both linear trap realizations shown in a and b can be made identical. R represents the electrodes’ minimal distance from the guide’s center.
