English

Trapping of charged particles by Bessel beams

Classical Physics 2012-11-13 v1

Abstract

There exist two well established methods to trap charged particles: the Penning trap and the Paul trap. The subject of this article is to present a third mechanism for trapping charged particles - trapping by beams of electromagnetic radiation. The essential role is played by the electric field configuration in the plane perpendicular to the beam axis (for nonrelativistic electrons, the magnetic field is less important). Particles are confined to the vicinity of the minimum-energy points. In particular, for beams of electromagnetic radiation carrying orbital angular momentum such points lie on the beam axis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1110.2497,
  title  = {Trapping of charged particles by Bessel beams},
  author = {Iwo Bialynicki-Birula and Zofia Bialynicki-Birula and Nadbor Drozd},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1110.2497},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

To appear in The Angular Momentum of Light, edited by D. Andrews and M. Babiker, CUP 2011