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Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics

Influence of Electric and Magnetic Fields on Interference Effects upon Multiple Light Scattering in Cold Atomic Ensembles

Ларионов Николай Владимирович, Igor M. Sokolov

Published Aug 1, 2018• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The correlation functions of the electromagnetic radiation scattered by an ensemble of atoms cooled to sub-Doppler temperatures and placed in an external static electric or magnetic field have been calculated by the diagram technique. Based on the derived relations, we have studied in detail the effect of coherent backscattering (CBS) of light. We have calculated the enhancement factor for CBS and analyzed its polarization and spectral dependences. We show that external fields affect the nature of multiple light scattering in an atomic ensemble, in particular, the character of interference upon such scattering, by leading to its optical anisotropy and related birefringence and dichroism. This, in turn, affects all of the observed CBS characteristics.

DOI
10.1134/s1063776118080046

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The correlation functions of the electromagnetic radiation scattered by an ensemble of atoms cooled to sub-Doppler temperatures and placed in an external static electric or magnetic field have been calculated by the diagram technique. Based on the derived relations, we have studied in detail the effect of coherent backscattering (CBS) of light. We have calculated the enhancement factor for CBS and analyzed its polarization and spectral dependences. We show that external fields affect the nature of multiple light scattering in an atomic ensemble, in particular, the character of interference upon such scattering, by leading to its optical anisotropy and related birefringence and dichroism. This, in turn, affects all of the observed CBS characteristics.
Abstract An angular distribution of the intensity of light scattered from an optically dense cold atomic ensemble placed into homogeneous static electric or magnetic field is calculated. Partial contributions of different orders of scattering into the selected polarization component of total intensity of the secondary radiation are analyzed. It is demonstrated that static fields make the medium anisotropic, which results in changes in both an angular distribution of such a radiation and relative contributions of different orders of scattering.
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\mathbf{B}B in the mesoscopic regime. Nonpertubative expressions in BBB 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=0B=0B=0, a result at variance with classical samples. We validate our theoretical results by a quantitative comparison with experimental data.
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.