Over the last quarter of this century revolutionary advances have been made both in kind and
in precision in the application of particle traps to the study of thephysics of charged
particles leading to intensi?ed interest in and wide proliferation of this topic. This book
is intended as a timely addition to the literature providing a systematic uni?ed treatment of
the subject from the point of view of the application of these devices to fundamental atomic
and particle physics. Thetechniqueofusingelectromagnetic?eldstocon?neandisolateatomic particles
in vacuo rather than by material walls of a container was initially
conceivedbyW.Paulintheformofa3Dversionoftheoriginalrfquadrupole mass ?lter for which he shared
the 1989 Nobel Prize in physics [1] whereas H.G. Dehmelt who also shared the 1989 Nobel Prize
[2] saw these devices (including the Penning trap) as a way of isolating electrons and ions
for the purposes of high resolution spectroscopy. These two broad areas of appli- tion have
developed more or less independently each attaining a remarkable degree of sophistication and
generating widespread interest and experimental activity.
