2001/07/05 by Cord A. Müller, Cord A. Mueller, Thibaut Jonckheere +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Physics #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Random lasers and scattering media #Ultracold atom #cond-mat.dis-nn #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.64.053804
published as Phys. Rev. A 64, 053804 (2001) · 22 pages Revtex, 9 figures, to appear in PRA
arxiv created 2001/07/05 · openalex publication_date 2001/10/02 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Since the work of Anderson on localization, interference effects for the propagation of a wave in the presence of disorder have been extensively studied, as exemplified in coherent backscattering (CBS) of light. In the multiple scattering of light by a disordered sample of thermal atoms, interference effects are usually washed out by the fast atomic motion. This is no longer true for cold atoms where CBS has recently been observed. However, the internal structure of the atoms strongly influences the interference properties. In this paper, we consider light scattering by an atomic dipole transition with arbitrary degeneracy and study its impact on coherent backscattering. We show that the interference contrast is strongly reduced. Assuming a uniform statistical distribution over internal degrees of freedom, we compute analytically the single- and double-scattering contributions to the intensity in the weak-localization regime. The so-called ladder and crossed diagrams are generalized to the case of atoms and permit to calculate enhancement factors and backscattering intensity profiles for polarized light and any closed atomic dipole transition.