Numerical investigation of stability regions in a cylindrical ion trap

Numerical computation of the equations governing the behavior of an ion in a cylindrical ion trap (CIT) was carried out using an algorithm based on the fifth-order Runge–Kutta (RK5) method. Afterwards, three stability regions for the CIT were computed via combination of the RK5 method and sixth-order Runge–Kutta (RK6) method with step-size control. The first region is in good agreement with the previous result in the literature, whereas the second and third stability regions obtained in this work are reported for the first time using the RK5 and RK6 methods. As a new conclusion, we demonstrated that the ratio of areas of the stability region for the CIT to that of a quadrupole ion trap (QIT) is the same for the three regions. Moreover, dependence of stability regions of the CIT on the trap dimensions as well as initial conditions of ions were investigated. We concluded that for the first region, the maximum value of q when U = 0, namely qmax, follows a power regression function, which has not been reported previously.

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► We analyzed a cylindrical ion trap using the fifth-order Runge–Kutta (RK5) method.
► We computed three stability regions of the trap using the RK5 and RK6 techniques.
► The ratio of the area of a region for the CIT to that of a Paul trap is same.
► The effect of the trap dimensions on the first stability region was investigated.
► The area of the second region is enlarged by doubling the trap sizes.