Related papers: Photon scattering from a cold, Gaussian atom cloud

We formulate a quantitative description of backscattered linearly polarized light using an extended photon diffusion formalism taking explicitly into account the scattering anisotropy parameter g of the medium. From diffusing wave…

Scattering processes in the atmospheres of planets cause characteristic features that can be particularly well observed in polarisation. For planet Earth, both molecular and scattering by small particles imprint specific signatures in its…

A relativistic analysis of the polarization properties of light elastically scattered by atomic hydrogen is performed, based on the Dirac equation and second order perturbation theory. The relativistic atomic states used for the…

We extend previous theoretical works to gain a better understanding of the origin of observed polarisation degree spectra of molecular clouds, which show a so-called V-shape, i.e. a pronounced minimum around 350~$\mu$m. For this purpose, we…

Population of levels of the hyperfine and fine split ground state of an atom is affected by radiative transitions induced by anisotropic radiation flux. Such aligned atoms precess in the external magnetic field and this affects properties…

We measure the coherent scattering of low-intensity, near-resonant light by a cloud of laser-cooled two-level rubidium atoms with a size comparable to the wavelength of light. We isolate a two-level atomic structure by applying a 300G…

Scattering of starlight by dust, molecules and electrons in spiral galaxies will produce a modification of the direct intensity and a polarization in the observed light. We treat the case where the distribution of scatterers can be…

On the basis of a quantum microscopic approach we study the dynamics of the afterglow of a dilute Gaussian atomic ensemble excited by pulsed radiation. Taking into account the vector nature of the electromagnetic field we analyze in detail…

Cold atomic clouds are promising platforms for generating correlated photons, but multiple scattering and associated Doppler broadening limit their temporal coherence. Here we demonstrate that cloud geometry provides a powerful means to…

With ready access to massive computer clusters we may now study light propagation in a dense cold atomic gas by means of basically exact numerical simulations. We report on a direct comparison between traditional optics, that is,…

The second order correlation function for light emitted from a strongly and near-resonantly driven dilute cloud of atoms is discussed. Because of the strong driving, the fluorescence spectrum separates into distinct peaks, for which the…

We discuss polarized lepton-proton scattering with special emphasis on the difference between target polarization defined relative to the lepton beam or to the virtual photon direction. In particular, this difference influences azimuthal…

We calculate the rate of precession of the direction of polarization of a photon traversing a sea of plane-polarized photons moving in the opposed direction, where the interaction is the one-loop "vacuum" Heisenberg-Euler coupling of four…

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 in the mesoscopic…

The polarization observed for stars background to dark clouds (Bok Globules) is often used as diagnostic to study the ongoing star formation processes in these clouds. Such polarization in the optical have been reported for eight nearby…

This article presents an introduction to optical pumping, atomic polarization and the Hanle effect in weakly magnetized stellar atmospheres. Although the physical processes and the theoretical framework described here are of interest for…

The quantum optical response of high density ultracold atomic systems is critical to a wide range of fundamentally and technically important physical processes. These include quantum image storage, optically based quantum repeaters and…

A theoretical study of the polarization entanglement of two photons emitted in the decay of metastable ionic states is performed within the framework of density matrix theory and second-order perturbative approach. Particular attention is…

Optimally extracting information from measurements performed on a physical system requires an accurate model of the measurement interaction. Continuously probing the collective spin of an Alkali atom cloud via its interaction with an…

Diffusing-wave spectroscopy is a powerful technique which consists in measuring the temporal correlation function of the intensity of light multiply scattered by a medium. In this paper, we apply this technique to cold atoms under purely…