A Penning trap is a type of device used to confine charged particles using a combination of electric and magnetic fields. It is named after the Dutch physicist Frans Michel Penning, who invented it in 1936. The Penning trap is particularly useful in various fields of physics, including atomic physics, particle physics, and mass spectrometry.
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A Penning trap uses a static electric quadrupole field for axial confinement and a static axial magnetic field for transverse confinement. The Lorentz force bends a moving electric charge's trajectory without doing work. An RF probe may interrogate a trapped particle, but an RF confining voltage is unnecessary in this ideal model. This makes the Penning trap useful for relating cyclotron frequencies and spin precession to a common magnetic field.