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Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Correlation of diffusing photons and level crossing spectroscopy

Éric Akkermans, Ohad Assaf

Published Dec 7, 2007• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that an enhanced intensity correlation shows up in the diffusion of photons multiply scattered by an atomic gas of large optical depth b . This enhancement occurs only for scattering atoms that are Zeeman degenerate and it leads to a deviation from the Rayleigh law. The fluctuations measured by their variance, display a resonance peak as a function of an applied magnetic field. The resonance width is proportional to the small factor 1/ b . We derive closed analytic expressions for all these physical quantities which are directly accessible experimentally.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/81/24002

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In a recent Letter (Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{98}, 083601 (2007), arXiv:cond-mat/0610804), O. Assaf and E. Akkermans claim that the angular correlations of the light intensity scattered by a cloud of cold atoms with internal degeneracy (Zeeman sublevels) of the ground state overcome the usual Rayleigh law. More precisely, they found that they become exponentially large with the size of the sample. In what follows, we will explain why their results are wrong and, in contrary, why the internal degeneracy leads to lower intensity correlations.

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Physical Review•Oct 5, 1967•9 citations
We show that an enhanced intensity correlation shows up in the diffusion of photons multiply scattered by an atomic gas of large optical depth b . This enhancement occurs only for scattering atoms that are Zeeman degenerate and it leads to a deviation from the Rayleigh law. The fluctuations measured by their variance, display a resonance peak as a function of an applied magnetic field. The resonance width is proportional to the small factor 1/ b . We derive closed analytic expressions for all these physical quantities which are directly accessible experimentally.
We show that a new interference effect appears in the intensity fluctuations of photons multiply scattered by an atomic gas of large optical depth b. This interference occurs only for scattering atoms that are Zeeman degenerate and it leads to a deviation from the Rayleigh law. The fluctuations measured by their variance, display a resonance peak as a function of an applied magnetic field. The resonance width is proportional to the small factor 1/b. We derive closed analytic expressions for all these physical quantities which are directly accessible experimentally.
The irradiation of a dilute cloud of cold atoms with a coherent light field produces a random intensity distribution known as laser speckle. Its statistical fluctuations contain information about the mesoscopic scattering processes at work inside the disordered medium. Following up on earlier work by Assaf and Akkermans [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 083601 (2007)], we analyze how static speckle-intensity correlations are affected by an internal Zeeman degeneracy of the scattering atoms. It is proven on general grounds that the speckle correlations cannot exceed the standard Rayleigh law. On the contrary, because which-path information is stored in the internal atomic states, the intensity correlations suffer from strong decoherence and become exponentially small in the diffusive regime applicable to an optically thick cloud.
We study the angular correlation function of speckle patterns that result from multiple scattering of photons by cold atomic clouds. We show that this correlation function becomes larger than the value given by Rayleigh law for classical scatterers. These large intensity fluctuations constitute a new mesoscopic effect specific to atom-photon interactions, that could not be observed in other systems such as weakly disordered metals. We provide a complete description of this behavior and expressions that allow for a quantitative comparison with experiments.
In a recent Letter (Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{98}, 083601 (2007), arXiv:cond-mat/0610804), O. Assaf and E. Akkermans claim that the angular correlations of the light intensity scattered by a cloud of cold atoms with internal degeneracy (Zeeman sublevels) of the ground state overcome the usual Rayleigh law. More precisely, they found that they become exponentially large with the size of the sample. In what follows, we will explain why their results are wrong and, in contrary, why the internal degeneracy leads to lower intensity correlations.
The angular distribution of scattered Lyman-$\ensuremath{\alpha}$ photons from atomic hydrogen is calculated as a function of an applied magnetic field. The intensity of the scattered radiation is a function of the energy difference of the excited-2P2P2P levels and shows an extremum at the point where two levels cross. Neglecting hyperfine structure, there are two level crossings of interest: one at 3484 G ($2{P}_{\frac{3}{2,\ensuremath{-}\frac{3}{2}}}\ensuremath{-}2{P}_{\frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{2}}$), and the other 5223G ($2{P}_{\frac{3}{2,\ensuremath{-}\frac{3}{2}}}\ensuremath{-}2{P}_{\frac{1}{2},\ensuremath{-}\frac{1}{2}}$), respectively. The coher$\stackrel{\mathrm{\ifmmode \breve{}\else \u{}\fi{}}}{\mathrm{e}}$nt and incoherent resonance scattering is determined near these crossing points by using a Hamiltonian that includes hyperfine structure and higher-order radiative effects. In the low-field region (3484 G), the hyperfine crossings that contribute to the coherent signal are at 3476.06 and 3491.93 G, respectively. The radiative width of the levels is considerably larger than the hyperfine splittings, and the total scattering intensity has a single peak at 3483.97 G. In the high-field region (5223 G), two hyperfine levels with ${m}_{F}=\ensuremath{-}1$ repel each other (anticross) with a minimum energy separation of 15.3 Mc/sec at 5200.1 G. Resonances occur at 5220.6 and 5223.9 G, and the maximum of the total signal is at 5222.6 G.