Ablation using very short pulses has shown a great promise in facilitating the growth of complex multi-element films with stoichiometries matching those of their parent materials. GaAs is an important material in the electronic and opto-electronic industries and due to its compound structure it is an intriguing candidate for pulsed laser deposition. This work investigates the effect of nanosecond laser pulse lengths on the ablation of GaAs in an inert atmosphere. The number of pulses was varied in order to find the optimal condition for nano particles formation in our setup. The deposited structures were studied by grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering and atomic force microscopy. It is shown that the GaAs nanoparticle sizes and size distributions can be controlled partly by the number of laser pulses applied in their production. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.