  Starting from a microscopic theory for atomic scatterers, we describe the
scattering of light by a single atom and study the coherent propagation of
light in a cold atomic cloud in the presence of a magnetic field B in the
mesoscopic regime. Non-pertubative expressions in B are given for the
magneto-optical effects and optical anisotropy. We then consider the multiple
scattering regime and address the fate of the coherent backscattering (CBS)
effect. We show that, for atoms with nonzero spin in their ground state, the
CBS interference contrast can be increased compared to its value when B=0, a
result at variance with classical samples. We validate our theoretical results
by a quantitative comparison with experimental data.
