Time-resolved analysis of strong-field induced plasmon oscillations in metal clusters by spectral interferometry with few-cycle laser fields.

We propose a scheme for ultrafast real-time imaging of laser-induced collective electron oscillations (Mie plasmons) in gas phase metal clusters by interferometrically stable scanning of two intense few-cycle optical laser pulses. The feasibility of our nonlinear spectral interferometry method with experimentally accessible observables is tested in a theoretical case study on simple-metal clusters (Na(147)). The results show that the plasmon period and lifetime as well as the phase and relative amplitude of the collective electron motion can be extracted with sub-fs resolution. The access to nonlinear response effects, as the demonstrated increase of the plasmon lifetime with laser intensity due to ionization-induced contraction of the electron cloud, opens up vast opportunities for interrogating ultrafast many-particle dynamics in nanosystems under strong laser fields with unprecedented resolution.