Tailoring Nanomaterials for Ultrafast and Chiral Plasmonics

Ultrafast nonlinear and chiral photonic applications are often limited by the available choice of naturally occurring materials and their generally weak responses. Here, we will discuss novel plasmonic nanomaterials and hetero-nanostructures for tailoring hot-electron dynamics, plasmonic nonlinearities, ultrashort pulse manipulation and chiral response. Going beyond traditional field enhancement effects, we show how the introduction of additional hot-electron relaxation pathways, anisotropy and nonlocality allows to accelerate of decelerate temporal response of nonlinear optical effects in plasmonic nanostructures. Precise control of nanoparticle shapes allows to achieve strong chiral response by engineering electric and magnetic dipoles responsible for chirality. This results in a freedom of engineering scattering patterns and optical forces.