Ahmed, AftabGelfand, RachelStorm, S. DavidLee, AnnaKlinkova, AnnaGuest, Jeffrey R.Pelton, Matthew2022-07-152022-07-152022-06-14Ahmed, Aftab, et al. "Low-Frequency Oscillations in Optical Measurements of Metal-Nanoparticle Vibrations." Nano Letters (14 June 2022). doi:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c01339https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c01339http://hdl.handle.net/11603/25174Time-resolved optical measurements of vibrating metal nanoparticles have been used extensively to probe the ultrafast mechanical properties of the nanoparticles and of the surrounding liquid, but nearly all investigations so far have been limited to the linear regime. Here, we report the observation of a low-frequency oscillating signal in transient-absorption measurements of nanoparticles with octahedral gold cores and cubic silver shells; the signal appears at the difference of two mechanical vibrational frequencies in the particles, suggesting a nonlinear mixing process. We tentatively attribute this proposed mixing to a nonlinear coupling between a vibrational mode of the nanoparticle and its optical-frequency plasmon resonance. The optimization of this nonlinear transduction may enable high-efficiency opto-mechanical frequency mixing in the GHz–THz frequency regime.7 pagesen-USThis work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.Public Domain Mark 1.0http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/Text