Light transport in cold atoms and thermal decoherence

Abstract

By using the coherent backscattering interference effect, we investigate experimentally and theoretically how coherent transport of light inside a cold atomic vapour is affected by the residual motion of atomic scatterers. As the temperature of the atomic cloud increases, the interference contrast dramatically decreases emphazising 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.

4 pages - submitted to Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (7)

• Intrinsic Decoherence in Mesoscopic Systems
• Dephasing of Electrons in Mesoscopic Metal Wires
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• Magnetic Field Enhanced Coherence Length in Cold Atomic Gases
• Spectral Dependence of Coherent Backscattering of Light in a Narrow-Resonance Atomic System
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