Coherent backscattering under conditions of pulsed radiation trapping

Coherent backscattering of pulsed radiation emitted by optically dense atomic ensembles is considered. The diagrammatic technique is used for deriving analytic expressions for correlation functions of scattered light, which make it possible to take into account all main factors affecting the dynamics of the process, including the hyperfine and Zeeman structure of the ground and first excited states of atoms, polarization of probe radiation, the actual shape and size of an atomic cloud, its spatial inhomogeneity, motion of atoms, and angular-momentum polarization of atoms. On the basis of these relations, the time dependence of the total intensity and the dependence of enhancement factor of backscattered light on the pulse duration, type of polarization of the polarization system of observation, optical thickness of the scattering medium, and the carrier frequency of the pulse are investigated. The calculations are performed for an ensemble of rubidium-85 atoms cooled in magnetooptical traps.