Coherent transport in presence of disorder and nonlinearity

Coherent transport in presence of disorder and nonlinearity

Seminar author:Thomas Wellens

Event date and time:04/13/2010 08:30:am

Event location:IFAE seminar room

Event contact:

In general, transport of waves in disordered media cannot fully be  described as a simple diffusion process, since wave interference  effects lead to a reduction or even complete suppression of the  diffusion constant (weak or strong localization) and the appearance of  a coherent backscattering peak. This talk presents a diagrammatic theory for treating the impact of  nonlinearities on these coherent transport effects. In particular, the conditions under which nonlinear effects diminish or enhance the  height of the coherent backscattering peak are discussed. Whereas most  of these results apply to classical or single-particle quantum waves, we will finally also address multi-photon scattering from strongly  driven two-level atoms, where coherent transport is additionally  affected by quantum mechanical decoherence.