  There exist two well established methods to trap charged particles: the
Penning trap and the Paul trap. The subject of this article is to present a
third mechanism for trapping charged particles - trapping by beams of
electromagnetic radiation. The essential role is played by the electric field
configuration in the plane perpendicular to the beam axis (for nonrelativistic
electrons, the magnetic field is less important). Particles are confined to the
vicinity of the minimum-energy points. In particular, for beams of
electromagnetic radiation carrying orbital angular momentum such points lie on
the beam axis.
