  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.
