Spatiotemporal properties of nanoshell plasmonic response for strong-field experiments

Field enhancement behavior of a SiO2/Au nanoshell is studied in the framework of strong-field physics. Localized plasmonic fields induce local electric field enhancement with the potential to lead to the strong-field regime without the use of costly amplified lasers. In this framework, electrons are tunnel ionized from the nanoshell and accelerated by the local field being spatially inhomogeneous in terms of spectral and polarization properties. These processes are happening within a single laser shot, and thermal effects are therefore neglected. We show that the localized response to ultrashort femtosecond pulses can be investigated by extending Mie theory to multilayer spherical particles. Nanoshell plasmonic resonances can be easily tuned depending on the volume ratio between core and whole particle. Optimum geometric parameters of the nanoshell are selected for use with ultrashort pulses centered at 800 nm where most femtosecond oscillators operate. It is shown that phase and amplitude reshaping of the incident pulse by the plasmonic resonance can be partially corrected using active shaping leading to ultrashort response of the medium. Finally, free electron classical trajectories are calculated to highlight the inhomogeneous nature of the local enhancement in a strong-field picture.