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The nonlinear electron dynamics in metallic nanoparticles is studied using a hydrodynamic model that incorporates most quantum many-body features, including spill-out and nonlocal effects as well as electron exchange and correlations. We show that, by irradiating the nanoparticle with a chirped laser pulse of modest intensity (autoresonance), it is possible to drive the electron dynamics far into the nonlinear regime, leading to enhanced energy absorption and complete ionization of the nanoparticle on a time scale of the order of 100 fs. The accompanying radiated power spectrum is rich in high-order harmonics.

A recently introduced effective quantum potential theory is studied in a low momentum region of phase space. This low momentum approximation is used to show that the new effective quantum potential induces a space-dependent mass and a smoothed potential both of them constructed from the classical potential. The exact solution of the approximated theory in one spatial dimension is found. The concept of effective transmission and reflection coefficients for effective quantum potentials is proposed and discussed in comparison with an analogous quantum statistical mixture problem. The results are applied to the case of a square barrier., 4 figures