Sensitive detection of radiation trapping in cold-atom clouds

In this paper, we calculate the effect of radiation trapping on the photon statistics of the light scattered from optical molasses. We propose that an intensity correlation function measurement may be sensitive to the presence of radiation trapping at an on-resonance optical depth as low as 0.1, more than an order of magnitude less than where effects of multiple scattering in cold-atom clouds have been previously observed [T. Walker, D. Sesko, and C. Wieman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 408 (1990); D. Sesko, T. Walker, and C. Wieman, J. Opt. Soc. Am. B. 8, 946 (1991)]