Comparison of three approaches to light scattering by dilute cold atomic ensembles

Abstract

Collective effects in atom-light interaction is of great importance for cold-atom-based quantum devices or fundamental studies on light transport in complex media. Here we discuss and compare three different approaches to light scattering by dilute cold atomic ensembles. The first approach is a coupled-dipole model, valid at low intensity, which includes cooperative effects, like superradiance, and other coherent properties. The second one is a random-walk model, which includes classical multiple scattering and neglects coherence effects. The third approach is a crude approximation only based on the attenuation of the excitation beam inside the medium, the so-called "shadow effect". We show that in the case of a low-density sample, the random walk approach is an excellent approximation for steady-state light scattering, and that the shadow effect surprisingly gives rather accurate results at least up to optical depths on the order of 15.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• The dependent scattering effect on radiative properties of micro/nanoscale discrete disordered media
• Subradiance in dilute atomic ensembles: Role of pairs and multiple scattering
• Bragg condition for scattering into a guided optical mode
• Sensitivity of electromagnetically induced transparency to light-mediated interactions
• Effective two-level approximation of a multi-level system driven by coherent and incoherent fields
• Nonradiant multiphoton states in quantum ring oligomers