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.

Revised text. 9 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Localization of ultrasound in a three-dimensional elastic network
• Cooperative effects and disorder: A scaling analysis of the spectrum of the effective atomic Hamiltonian
• Magnetic-field-driven localization of light in a cold-atom gas
• Search for Anderson localization of light by cold atoms in a static electric field

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Sensitivity of electromagnetically induced transparency to light-mediated interactions