The powerful combination of i) ultrafast lasers, ii) multiphoton photoemission, and iii)
high numerical aperture in-vacuo objectives provides a remarkably flexible and sensitive
experimental platform for exploring chemical physics of plasmonic materials on the
nanoscale. This talk will provide an overview of recent progress in the group. 1) The first
topic will be on exploiting novel high repetition rate (75 MHz) ultrafast OPO oscillators
to probe plasmonic properties of isolated nanostructures via scanning photoemission

Nanostructuring of thin metallic films can lead to either resonant or broadband absorption, followed by ohmic loss and energy dissipation as heat. However, if the absorption occurs near an interface, an opportunity arises to capture the energy prior to thermalization. In this talk, we will present our recent work on hot carrier generation and collection in metallic films and nanostructures and discussion future applications that could enable solar cells with efficiencies in excess of 40%.