Magnetic-field effects on coherent backscattering of light in case of Mie spheres,” Europhys

PACS. 78.20.Ls – Magneto-optical effects. Abstract. – Magneto-optical Faraday rotation destroys the coherent backscattering enhance-ment of elastically multiple scattered light. In addition, Faraday rotation has been predicted, especially for Mie scattering, to cause a shift of the coherent backscattering cone off the exact backscattering direction in case of circular polarized light, or a twin peak in case of linear polarization (see Lenke R. and Maret G., Eur. Phys. J. B, 17 (2000) 171). In this letter we report the first experimental observations of these predictions. Moreover, we have observed an unexpected transversal asymmetry in the backscattered intensity, i.e. an asymmetric pho-ton flux perpendicular to the external magnetic field and perpendicular to the direction of the incident light. Coherent backscattering (CB) has experienced growing interest during the last years in the context of the research for a better understanding of light propagation in turbid media (for more information the reader is referred to [1–5], for example). CB originates from the constructive interference, in the exact backscattering direction, between each light path and its reversed path as both paths always have exactly the same length. CB is a very stabl