Temporal differentiation and integration of few-cycle pulses by ultrathin metallic films

We study theoretically the temporal transformations of few-cycle pulses upon linear interaction with ultrathin metallic films. We show that under certain conditions on the film thickness and the pulse spectrum, one obtains the temporal differentiation of the pulse shape in transmission and the temporal integration in reflection. In contrast to previous studies, these transformations are obtained for the field of few-cycle pulses itself instead of the slowly varying pulse envelope. These results open up new opportunities for the control of the temporal pulse profile in ultrafast optics.