Besides the importance of the primary process in physics and chemistry, application of the light–NP interaction has attracted significant interest from various areas ranging from analytical chemistry to material chemistry and biomedicine. Here we consider both mechanistic and application aspects. Our attention is focused on pulsed-laser-induced fast processes that revealed the heating–cooling dynamics of electrons, lattice (particle), and particle's environment.

On the application side, we focus on material fabrication and processing that beat diffraction-limited resolution. Together, we will shed a light on the essence of research activities carried out in the past 10 years. In addition to an abundance of latest information obtained from currently available literature, this review includes figures obtained by our own calculations to provide readers with a better understanding of the basics of the optical properties and energy and heat-transfer processes of Au NPs, which are not familiar to photochemists.