Ion transfer and storage using inhomogeneous radio frequency (RF) electric fields in combination with gas-assisted ion cooling and focusing constitutes one of the basic techniques in mass spectrometry today. The RF motion of ions in the bath gas environment involves a large number of ion-neutral collisions that leads to the internal activation of ions and their effective "heating" (when a thermal distribution of internal energies results). The degree of ion activation required in various applications may range from a minimum level (e.g., slightly raising the average internal energy) to an intense level resulting in ion fragmentation. Several research groups proposed using the effective temperature as a measure of ion activation under conditions of multiple ion-neutral collisions. Here we present approximate relationships for the effective ion temperature relevant to typical operation modes of RF multipole devices. We show that RF ion activation results in near-thermal energies for ions occupying an equilibrium position at the center of an RF trap, whereas increased ion activation can be produced by shifting ions off-center, e.g., by means of an external DC electric field. The ion dissociation in the linear quadrupole ion trap using the dipolar DC ion activation has been observed experimentally and interpreted in terms of the effective ion temperature. ollisional activation of ions takes place in all practical mass spectrometry measurements, either as a side effect of a residual gas pressure, or for the specific purpose of collisional ion cooling, focusing or collision induced dissociation. Modeling of the collisionally induced ion activation process in mass spectrometry has been the focus of extensive study [1][2][3][4][5]. Of particular importance is the collisional activation of ions in radio frequency (RF) ion traps and guides, where a substantial bath gas pressure and long residence times result in large numbers of the ionneutral collisions [6]. Several research groups have proposed using the effective temperature as a measure of ion activation under conditions of multiple ionneutral collisions [7][8][9][10][11][12]. As such, the effective temperature concept proved to be very useful in the interpretation of ion activation data obtained for various mass spectrometry experiments, in particular in quadrupole ion trap experiments [8,9,[13][14][15]. Generally, the internal energy of ions produced at high pressures (e.g., by the electrospray ionization process) can be characterized in terms of effective ion temperature [16 -20]. The effective temperature T eff of an ion, moving in a bath gas under the influence of electric fields, can be expressed through the ion drift velocity V drift as follows:2 , where T is the gas temperature, and C T is a model dependent proportionality coefficient [9,12,21]. This approximation is applicable to conditions when the force acting on an ion is constant during a time interval longer than the ion velocity relaxation time (i.e., the drift motion approximation) [22]. In the lower ...