Phase Dependence of Few-Cycle Pulsed Laser Propagation in a Two-Level Atom Medium

The phase-dependent feature of few-cycle pulsed laser propagation in a resonant two-level atom medium is demonstrated by solving the full Maxwell-Bloch equations. Even in the perturbative region, the propagating carrier field and the corresponding spectra of few-cycle pulsed laser are sensitive to the initial phase due to the self-phase modulation. For the larger pulse area, the fact that the carrier-wave reshaping comes from the carrier-wave Rabi flopping is also responsible for this sensitivity, and the phase dependent feature is more evident.