Pseudopotential

Ion motion in an RF trap consists of a slow secular RF motion and a fast RF micromotion. Ignoring the micromotion, the secular motion could be approximated by replacing the RF field with a certain static field. The potential throughout this equivalent static field is called the (Dehmelt) pseudopotential (Dehmelt, 1967) and provides a simpler way to analyze the field by ignoring time-dependence.

SIMION Example: pseudopotential [8.1.0.47] builds a pseudopotential PA from another PA, for use in PE/contour plotting and/or trajectory solving. See that example for futher information.

See Also

• Time-Dependent Field
• Paul Trap