Optical properties and ultrafast dynamics of metallic nanocrystals

Noble metal particles have long fascinated scientists because of their intense color, which led to their application in stained glass windows as early as the Middle Ages. The recent resurrection of colloidal and cluster chemistry has brought about the strive for new materials that allow a bottoms-up approach of building improved and new devices with nanoparticles or artificial atoms. In this review, we discuss some of the properties of individual and some assembled metallic nanoparticles with a focus on their interaction with cw and pulsed laser light of different energies. The potential application of the plasmon resonance as sensors is discussed.