Creation of electric potential minima in 3D: Trapping charged particles

P. Mandal

St. Paul's Cathedral Mission College

An electrostatic potential minima does not exist in three dimension. However, an alternating electric field can produce a dynamical potential minima in three dimensional space and charged particles can be trapped within such potential well. A system of trapped ion/s is almost free from unknown external perturbations and hence such a system finds enormous applications in different fields. This article explains how such a potential minima can be developed with electric field only and how the charged particles can be trapped within it. Some important applications of trapped particles have been outlined here with a demonstrative experiment for realization of the technique.