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arXiv:quant-ph/0603153 · Physical Review Letters

Light Transport in Cold Atoms and Thermal Decoherence

G. Labeyrie, Dominique Delande, Robin Kaiser, Christian Miniatura

Published Jul 7, 2006• 36 citations
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Abstract

We use the coherent backscattering interference effect to investigate experimentally and theoretically how coherent transport of light inside a cold atomic vapor is affected by the residual motion of atomic scatterers. As the temperature of the atomic cloud increases, the interference contrast decreases dramatically. This emphasizes the role of motion-induced decoherence for resonant scatterers even in the sub-Doppler regime of temperature. We derive analytical expressions for the corresponding coherence time.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.97.013004

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We use the coherent backscattering interference effect to investigate experimentally and theoretically how coherent transport of light inside a cold atomic vapor is affected by the residual motion of atomic scatterers. As the temperature of the atomic cloud increases, the interference contrast decreases dramatically. This emphasizes the role of motion-induced decoherence for resonant scatterers even in the sub-Doppler regime of temperature. We derive analytical expressions for the corresponding coherence time.
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.
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Summary form only given. A wave propagating in a strongly scattering medium experiences many scattering events which rapidly erase the memory of its initial direction on a typical scale length known as the transport mean free path. It is now known that interference can profoundly alter the wave transport, a spectacular manifestation being weak and strong localisation of waves. We shall briefly review the basics of coherent backscattering (CBS) and the results obtained with classical scatterers. We shall then describe our experiment using cold atoms and discuss the experimental data. The non trivial role of the atomic quantum internal structure in the enhancement reduction will be singled out in a simple situation and results of analytical calculations will be presented.