We have studied the amplitude and temporal correlations of intensity fluctuations of multiply scattered light transmitted through a colloidal suspension. When the coherence length
lc of the incident light becomes comparable to the width of the probability distribution of photon-path lengths, both the amplitude and dynamics of intensity fluctuations become functions of
lc. In this article we present a simple theory that relates these coherence effects to the photon path-length distribution P(L). We have tested this theory using P(L) calculated from computer simulations and from the diffusion approximation, and find that our theory qualitatively accounts for the observed dependences on coherence length. Our results indicate when the effects of finite laser coherence must be taken into account in quasielastic multiple scattering. In the few-scattering regime of quasielastic multiple scattering, we find that the intensity autocorrelation function generally has a stretched-exponential form, and we discuss the origin of this behavior.
Mesoscopic interference effects in multiple scattering of photons depend crucially on the internal structure of the scatterers. In the present paper, we develop the analytical theory of multiple photon scattering by cold atoms with arbitrary internal hyperfine multiplets. For a specific application, we calculate the enhancement factor of elastic coherent backscattering as a function of detuning from an entire hyperfine multiplet of neighboring resonances that cannot be considered isolated. Our theory permits one to understand why atoms behave differently from classical Rayleigh point-dipole scatterers, and how the classical description is recovered for larger but still microscopic objects like molecules or clusters.