Optical Manipulation of Light Scattering in Cold Atomic Rubidium

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A brief perspective on light scattering in dense and cold atomic rubidium is presented. We particularly focus on the influence of auxiliary applied fields on the system response to a weak and nearly resonant probe field. Auxiliary fields can strongly disturb light propagation; in addition to the steady state case, dynamically interesting effects appear clearly in both the time domain, and in the optical polarization dependence of the processes. Following a general introduction, two examples of features found in such studies are presented. These include nonlinear optical effects in (a) comparative studies of forward- and fluorescence-configuration scattering under combined excitation of a control and probe field, and (b) manipulation of the spatial structure of the optical response due to a light shifting strong applied field.