Optical detection and femtosecond spectroscopy of a single nanoparticle

Hatim Baida, Aurélien Crut, Paolo Maioli, Thanh Binh Nguyen, Dai Hung Nguyen, Natalia Del Fatti and Fabrice Vallée

Abstract

An extension to semiconductor quantum dots of the spatial-modulation technique, demonstrated for the optical detection and linear spectroscopy of a single metal nanoparticle, is described. The association of this approach to a high sensitivity femtosecond pump-probe setup is discussed and applied to the investigation of the acoustic vibration of a single silver nanoparticle