  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.

Optics;Quantum Physics