Quadrupole magnet

The simplest magnetic quadrupole is two identical bar magnets parallel to each other such that the north pole of one is next to the south of the other and vice versa. Such a configuration will have no dipole moment, and its field will decrease at large distances faster than that of a dipole. A stronger version with very little external field involves using a k=3 Halbach cylinder.

In some designs of quadrupoles using electromagnets, there are four steel pole tips: two opposing magnetic north poles and two opposing magnetic south poles. The steel is magnetized by a large electric current in the coils of tubing wrapped around the poles. Another design is a Helmholtz coil layout but with the current in one of the coils reversed.

Quadrupoles in particle accelerators

At the particle speeds reached in high energy particle accelerators, the magnetic force term is larger than the electric term in the Lorentz force:

${\displaystyle \mathbf{F}=q(\mathbf{E}+\mathbf{v}\times \mathbf{B}),}$

and thus magnetic deflection is more effective than electrostatic deflection. Therefore a 'lattice' of electromagnets is used to bend, steer and focus a charged particle beam.

The quadrupoles in the lattice are of two types: 'F quadrupoles' (which are horizontally focusing but vertically defocusing) and 'D quadrupoles' (which are vertically focusing but horizontally defocusing). This situation is due to the laws of electromagnetism (the Maxwell equations) which show that it is impossible for a quadrupole to focus in both planes at the same time. The image on the right shows an example of a quadrupole focusing in the vertical direction for a positively charged particle going into the image plane (forces above and below the center point towards the center) while defocusing in the horizontal direction (forces left and right of the center point away from the center).

If an F quadrupole and a D quadrupole are placed immediately next to each other, their fields completely cancel out (in accordance with Earnshaw's theorem). But if there is a space between them (and the length of this has been correctly chosen), the overall effect is focusing in both horizontal and vertical planes. A lattice can then be built up enabling the transport of the beam over long distances—for example round an entire ring. A common lattice is a FODO lattice consisting of a basis of a focusing quadrupole, 'nothing' (often a bending magnet), a defocusing quadrupole and another length of 'nothing'.