Space Focusing of Polar Diatomic Molecules Using Electrostatic Hexapole Fields

Space focusing of polar diatomic molecules using an electrostatic hexapole field is discussed, and it is shown that focused molecular trajectories in this type of field are properly described by a Jacobian elliptic function. Although a detailed mathematical treatment is given, emphasis is placed upon the physical nature of the trajectories. These results are applied to the design of a molecular beam resonance apparatus using hexapole fields, and it is shown that, in practice, several simplifying approximations (with little loss in accuracy) may be made which allow design calculations to be carried out using only a slide rule.