Paper detail

Radiation trapping and Lévy flights in atomic vapours: an introductory review

Multiple scattering is a process in which a particle is repeatedly deflected by other particles. In an overwhelming majority of cases, the ensuing random walk can successfully be described through Gaussian, or normal, statistics. However, like a (growing) number of other apparently inofensive systems, diffusion of light in dilute atomic vapours eludes this familiar interpretation, exhibiting a superdiffusive behavior. As opposed to normal diffusion, whereby the particle executes steps in random directions but with lengths slightly varying around an average value (like a drunkard whose next move is unpredictable but certain to within a few tens of centimeters), superdiffusion is characterized by sudden abnormally long steps (Lévy flights) interrupting sequences of apparently regular jumps which, although very rare, determine the whole dynamics of the system. The formal statistics tools to describe superdiffusion already exist and rely on stable, well understood distributions. As scientists become aware of, and more familiar with, this non-orthodox possibility of interpretation of random phenomena, new systems are discovered or re-interpreted as following Lévy statistics. Propagation of light in resonant atomic vapours is one of these systems that have been studied for decades and have only recently been shown to be the scene of Lévy flights.