Souvik Chatterjee

Observation of number-density-dependent growth of plasmonic nanobubbles

Interaction dynamics of laser pulses and nanoparticles are of great interest in recent years. In many cases, laser-nanoparticle interactions result in the formation of plasmonic nanobubbles, and the dynamics of nanoparticles and nanobubbles are inseparable. So far, very little attention has been paid to the number density. Here we report the first observation of number-density-dependent growth of plasmonic nanobubbles. Our results show that the nanobubbles growth depends (does not depend) on the number density at high (low) laser fluence, although the inter-particle distance in the solution is as long as 14–30 μm. This cannot be explained by the existing physical picture, and we propose a new model which takes into account the pressure waves arising from nanoparticles. The numerical results based on this model agree well with the experimental results. Our findings imply that the number density can be a new doorknob to control laser-nanobubble as well as laser-nanoparticle interactions.

Ionization efficiency of Doppler-broadened atoms by transform-limited and broadband nanosecond pulses: one-photon resonant two-photon ionization of muoniums

We theoretically study the ionization efficiency of Doppler-broadened atoms through a one-photon resonant two-photon ionization process using nanosecond pump and ionizing laser pulses. Under the presence of significant (> tens of GHz) Doppler broadening, the bandwidth of the transform-limited nanosecond pump pulse is far smaller than the Doppler width, and the use of the broadband nanosecond pulse rather than the transform-limited nanosecond pulse seems to be much more efficient to pump and eventually ionize atoms. It turns out, however, that the transform-limited nanosecond pump pulse with sufficient high intensity can outperform the broadband nanosecond pump pulse in the high intensity regime for the ionizing pulse, at which the other broadening mechanisms because of the strong pump and fast ionization play more important roles than the bandwidth of the pump pulse. Using a set of density matrix equations, we present specific numerical results for muoniums (μ+e−) with enormous Doppler widths (80 and 230 GHz), which support the above argument.

Asymmetric branching of dissociated photofragments of HD{sup +} in an intense femtosecond laser field

We have numerically explored the asymmetry in the branching ratio of the photofragments in the photodissociation of HD{sup +} (neutral D and neutral H), leading to the possibility of localization of the electron on a chosen nucleus by careful tuning of the laser parameters. For two different frequencies we show that, starting from an initial stationary wave function, proper tuning of the pulse duration (2{sigma}) and peak intensities (I{sup 0}) of the laser pulses can lead to very different branching ratios of the two reaction channels. The results are interpreted in terms of the propagation of the nonstationary wave packet through regions having dominant radiative or nonradiative interactions at different times. We also investigate what effect the choice of initial vibrational state has on the overall asymmetry in the branching ratio of the dissociation products.