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Abstract

We focus on the propagation properties of a single-cycle laser pulse through a two-level medium by numerically solving the full-wave Maxwell-Bloch equations. The counter-rotating terms in the spontaneous emission damping are included such that the equations of motion are slightly different from the conventional Bloch equations. The counter-rotating terms can considerably suppress the broadening of the pulse envelope and the decrease of the group velocity rooted from dispersion. Furthermore, for incident single-cycle pulses with envelope area 4$\pi$, the time-delay of the generated soliton pulse from the main pulse depends crucially on the carrier-envelope phase of the incident pulse. This can be utilized to determine the carrier-envelope phase of the single-cycle laser pulse.