Analysis of the quadrupole mass filter with quadrupole excitation by the envelope equation method

The method of the envelope equation has been developed to describe the stability of the motion of ions in a quadrupole mass filter in the presence of periodic excitations of the feeding voltage. Dynamic equations that describe the variations in the envelope of ion vibrations in the vicinity of the vertex of the first common stability region have been obtained and reduced to the form of the Mathieu equations. The splitting of the stability diagram of the motion of ions into stability islands due to excitation has been described. The results of the approximate theory have been confirmed by an exact analysis of the stability diagram for rational values of the relative excitation frequency. The boundaries of the applicability domain for the developed theory limited by first-order resonances have been determined.