Multiple scattering of light in cold atomic clouds in a magnetic field

• Main Authors: Sigwarth, Olivier, Labeyrie, Guillaume, Delande, Dominique, Miniatura, Christian
• Other Authors: Institute of Advanced Studies
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Physics::Atomic physics::Quantum theory
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/101833; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18768
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Starting from a microscopic theory for atomic scatterers, we describe the scattering of light by a single atom and study the coherent propagation of light in a cold atomic cloud in the presence of a magnetic field B in the mesoscopic regime. Nonpertubative expressions in B are given for the magneto-optical effects and optical anisotropy. We then consider the multiple-scattering regime and address the fate of the coherent-backscattering (CBS) effect. We show that, for atoms with nonzero spin in their ground state, the CBS interference contrast can be increased compared to its value when B=0, a result at variance with classical samples. We validate our theoretical results by a quantitative comparison with experimental data.