Mesoscopy of light in cold atomic gases

Olivier Sigwarth

Universite Paris 6, Ecole Normale Superieure, Laboratoire Kastler-Brossel, case 74, 4, Place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France

We investigate the weak localization of light, an interference effect which survives disorder averaging, in cold atomic gases. In particular, we study the impact of an external magnetic field on coherent backscattering. It appears that the magnetic field can enhance the phase coherence length of light inside a gas of cold atoms whith a degenerate ground state. The poster presents our recent experimental and theoretical results on this topic.