Abstract

Ultrafast interactions of electrons between themselves and with their environment (lattice, surfaces …) are key effects in the fundamental and technological properties of metallic systems. Their modification by the confinement in metal nanoparticles is thus of central interest for the understanding of the specific properties of these materials. Time resolved femtosecond techniques have been shown to be powerful tools for the investigation of the electron scattering processes in metals and have been extensively used in bulk materials' and recently applied to metal nanopartides.²⁻⁴

© 2002 Optical Society of America