11-fs dark pulses generated via coherent absorption in plasmonic metamaterial

We demonstrate generation of the shortest reported 11fs dark pulses using the coherent absorption process on a plasmonic absorber with a gating pulse. The dark pulses appear as a power dip on the envelope of a long carrier pulse and are characterized using the cross-correlation technique. The principal difference and advantage of our approach in comparison with previously developed laser sources of dark pulses is that, in principle, it allows transferring arbitrary pattern of bright pulses into a pattern of dark pulses in another optical signal channel.