Abstract
Electronic excitations in metal particles with sizes up to a few nanometers are shown to have a one-electron character when a laser pulse is applied off the plasmon resonance. The calculated lifetimes of these excitations are in the femtosecond timescale but their values are substantially different from those in bulk. This deviation can be explained from the large weight of the excitation wave function in the nanoparticle surface region, where dynamic screening is significantly reduced. The well-known quadratic dependence of the lifetime with the excitation energy in bulk breaks down in these finite-size systems.
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