Tunable in situ Near-UV Pulses by Transient Plasmonic Resonance in Nanocomposites

Abstract

We propose a new concept for generation of ultrashort pulses based on transient plasmonic resonance in nanoparticle composites. Photoionization and free-carriers plasma change the susceptibility of nanoparticles on a few-femtosecond scale. This results in a narrow time window during the pump pulse duration when the system is in plasmonic resonance, accompanied by a short burst of the local field. During this process, frequency-tunable few-fs pulses are generated. We elucidate the details of the above mechanism, and investigate the influences of different contributing processes.