Light scattering and dipole-dipole interactions in cold and hot vapors

Yvan R. P. Sortais

Danfu Liang, ShaoGang Yu, Yifu Zhu +2 more

Quentin Baudouin, William Guerin, Robin Kaiser

Atomic physics experiments, based on hot vapors or laser-cooled atomic samples, may be useful to simulate some astrophysical problems, where radiation pressure, radiative transport or light amplification are involved. We discuss several experiments and proposals, dealing with multiple-scattering of light in hot and cold atomic vapors, random lasing in cold atoms and light-induced long-range forces, which may be relevant in this context.

J. Pellegrino, Ronan Bourgain, Stephan Jennewein +4 more

We study the emergence of collective scattering in the presence of dipole-dipole interactions when we illuminate a cold cloud of rubidium atoms with a near-resonant and weak intensity laser. The size of the atomic sample is comparable to the wavelength of light. When we gradually increase the number of atoms from 1 to ~450, we observe a broadening of the line, a small redshift and, consistently with these, a strong suppression of the scattered light with respect to the noninteracting atom case. We compare our data to numerical simulations of the optical response, which include the internal level structure of the atoms.

H. H. Jen

H. van Kampen, Vladimir A. Sautenkov, E. R. Eliel +1 more