C02 - Light-induced correlations in dense atomic media

Summary

The impact of strong magnetic correlations in a dense cold gas of dipolar dysprosium atoms onto the propgation of light as well as signatures of cooperative effects, like sub- or superradiance, are investigated in an experiment-theory collaboration. Experimentally, we map the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction onto light and the control over the cold atom samples is used to actively shape the outgoing light state. Theoretically, the competition between magnetic and electric dipole-dipole interactions is studied in the quantum cooperative regime in order to gain a quantum field theoretical description of light scattering in dense degenerate quantum gases.