Data for: Spatial averaging for light reflection and transmission through cold atom arrays

<p>This data is for a paper where we theoretically and computationally investigated the role that the spatial spread of atoms plays in the transmission and reflection of weak light from atom arrays. In particular, we investigated whether coherent wave functions for the atoms’ positions leads to different results from a thermal distribution with the same spatial spread. We found that the coherence is not relevant when the light is weak and the electronic states evolve on time scales shorter than the oscillation period of the atoms in their traps. Full numerical calculations and derivations using the sudden approximation showed that reflection and transmission agree with the simple averaging over atom positions for these conditions. For parameters outside these restrictions, the simple spatial averaging may lead to inaccurate results.</p>