Mass analysis with islands of stability has been investigated with three linear quadrupole mass filters: two with 4% added hexapole fields constructed with equal diameter (quadrupole 4A) and unequal diameter (quadrupole 4B) rods, and a conventional round-rod quadrupole that has apparently been slightly damaged. Islands are formed by applying auxiliary quadrupole excitation. With the Mathieu parameter, a Ͻ 0, mass analysis with both quadrupoles with hexapole fields operated normally, i.e., without islands, gives only low resolution. A factor of 10 or more increase in resolution is possible with the use of stability islands. With a Ͼ 0, when quadrupole 4A is operated normally, peak shapes similar to that of a conventional quadrupole can be obtained at resolutions higher than 850. At lower resolutions, peaks are split. When quadrupole 4B is operated without islands, resolution up to 2000 is possible, but there are low mass tails and structure is formed on the peaks. With mass analysis with an island of stability, both quadrupoles 4A and 4B show peaks free of structure and without tails. Ion transmission is also improved with some operating conditions. With the conventional round-rod quadrupole, mass analysis with islands of stability increases the limiting resolution from 2500 to 4360. At a resolution of 2500, the transmission is increased by about two orders of magnitude. These results show that the use of islands of stability improves mass analysis with quadrupoles with distorted fields, and may, in the future, allow use of quadrupoles constructed with at least some lower mechanical tolerances. In some instruments, a quadrupole operated as a linear ion trap (such as Q3 in a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer) must also be capable of mass analysis [9].In general, the potential of a linear quadrupole with field distortions can be written as [10]where x and y are Cartesian coordinates, r 0 represents the distance from the central axis to an electrode for an ideal quadrupole and otherwise is a normalization factor, Re͓f͑x ϩ iy͔͒ is the real part of the complex function f(x ϩ iy), i 2 ϭ Ϫ1, A N is the dimensionless amplitude of a multipole (2N-pole), and (t) is a timedependent voltage applied to the electrodes. An ideal linear quadrupole has A 2 ϭ 1 and all other multipoles zero. A practical linear quadrupole usually has A 2 Ϸ 1, and other higher order multipole amplitudes in the range 10 Ϫ5 to 10 Ϫ3 [2-4]. Methods of adding an octopole field of 2% to 4% [11], i.e., A 4 ⁄A 2 ϭ 0.02 Ϫ 0.04, and a hexapole field [12] of up to 12% (A 3 ⁄A 2 Յ 0.12) to linear quadrupoles constructed from round rods have been described. (Hexapole and octopole fields are the next two higher multipoles after the quadrupole in the expansion of eq 1.) A hexapole field is added by rotating the two y rods towards an x rod through a small angle . The amplitude of the hexapole, A 3 , is approximately proportional to . This method also adds other higher multipoles, including an octopole field [12]. Addition of these field distortions might be expe...