Vanadium dioxide shows a passive and reversible change from a monoclinic insulator phase to a metallic tetragonal rutile structure when the sample temperature is close to and over 68 degrees C. As a kind of functional material, VO2 thin films deposited on fused quartz substrates were successfully prepared by the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. With laser illumination at 400 nm on the obtained films, the phase transition (PT) occurred. The observed light-induced PT was as fast as the laser pulse duration of 100 fs. Using a femtosecond laser system, the relaxation processes in VO2 were studied by optical pump-probe spectroscopy. Upon a laser excitation an instantaneous response in the transient reflectivity and transmission was observed followed by a relatively longer relaxation process. The alteration is dependent on pump power. The change in reflectance reached a maximum value at a pump pulse energy between 7 and 14 mJ/cm(2). The observed PT is associated with the optical interband transition in VO2 thin film. It suggests that with a pump laser illuminating on the film, excitation from the d(theta,epsilon) - state of valence band to the unoccupied excited mixed d(theta,epsilon)-pi* -state of the conduction band in the insulator phase occurs, followed by a resonant transition to an unoccupied excited mixed d(theta,epsilon)-pi* - state of the metallic phase band. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.