Transport of light through a dense ensemble of cold atoms in a static electric field

Abstract

We demonstrate that the transport of coherent quasiresonant light through a dense cloud of immobile two-level atoms subjected to a static external electric field can be described by a simple diffusion process up to atomic number densities of the order of at least $10^2$ atoms per wavelength cubed. Transport mean free paths well below the wavelength of light in the free space can be reached without inducing any sign of Anderson localization of light or of any other mechanism of breakdown of diffusion.

arXiv commentRevised text. 9 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Near-resonant light transmission in two-dimensional dense cold atomic media with short-range positional correlations
• Influence of atomic motion on the collective effects in dense and cold atomic ensembles
• Intensity of waves inside a strongly disordered medium
• Sensitivity of electromagnetically induced transparency to light-mediated interactions