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Coherent scattering of near-resonant light by a dense microscopic cold atomic cloud

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  • S. Jennewein
  • M. Besbes
  • N.J. Schilder
  • S.D. Jenkins
  • C. Sauvan
  • J. Ruostekoski
  • J.-J. Greffet
  • Y.R.P. Sortais
  • A. Browaeys
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Article number233601
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>8/06/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Physical review letters
Issue number23
Volume116
Number of pages6
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We measure the coherent scattering of light by a cloud of laser-cooled atoms with a size comparable to the wavelength of light. By interfering a laser beam tuned near an atomic resonance with the field scattered by the atoms, we observe a resonance with a redshift, a broadening, and a saturation of the extinction for increasing atom numbers. We attribute these features to enhanced light-induced dipole-dipole interactions in a cold, dense atomic ensemble that result in a failure of standard predictions such as the “cooperative Lamb shift”. The description of the atomic cloud by a mean-field model based on the Lorentz-Lorenz formula that ignores scattering events where light is scattered recurrently by the same atom and by a microscopic discrete dipole model that incorporates these effects lead to progressively closer agreement with the observations, despite remaining differences

Bibliographic note

Funded by EPSRC: Quantum Technology Hub for Sensors and Metrology (EP/M013294/1)