In view of the recent successful confinement of decelerated sodium atoms in a magnetostatic trap, it is of interest to evaluate possible trap-field configurations. Neutral atoms in a Zeeman sublevel whose energy increases with field can be confined by a field whose magnitude ‖B‖ increases with distance from the center. Because this same basic requirement applies also to traps for neutrons and for plasmas (in the guiding-center approximation), trap configurations developed previously for these purposes are of interest for neutral atoms. However, the desired properties differ considerably because of very different objectives and different behavior of very cold atoms as compared with hot plasmas. We characterize basic trap configurations using both the exact expressions for the field, and a multipole polynomial expansion that facilitates studies of symmetry properties and classical or quantum orbits. Polynomial terms for the field components are derived and coefficients obtained by comparison with Taylor-series expansions and by global fit. Contours of ‖B‖ for various trap configurations are also presented. Under certain restrictive conditions, ‖B‖, and hence the effective potential, can be made isotropic to second order.

• Received 14 November 1986

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.35.1535