Introduction to Interactions of Electric and Magnetic Fields with Ions

1 Introduction to Interactions of Electric and Magnetic Fields with Ions 

The interaction of electrical and magnetic fields with charged particles (ions and electrons in the present context) is fundamental to the understanding of how mass spectrometers separate ions according to their ratios of mass to charge. A brief introduction to this subject is given in Appendix 6.1. For convenience the equation numbers in the Appendix continue those in the main text. 

The relationships discussed in Appendix 6.1 that are most important for the following discussion concern the relationships among electric field strength Ex along a spatial coordinate X (see accompanying text box). 

The SI unit for electrical potential is the volt (V) unfortunately the same symbol (V) is frequently also used instead of 4 to denote the physical quantity (electrical potential) for which the volt is the SI unit, but in practice the context does not usually lead to confusion and this book will follow the hterature by using both symbols occasionally. The SI unit for the magnitude of an electric field (the electric field strength) E is thus (V.m ). 

Equation [6.10] and its variants account for many processes occurring in a mass spectrometer these include the transport of ions from ion source to analyzer to ion 

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