In this thesis we present a numerical and theoretical study of the interplay between cooperative effects and light localization in atomic vapour, completed by an experimental study of these cooperative effects for dilute cold atom clouds in the multiple scattering regime. The first chapter describes the model we use, based on the light matter effective Hamiltonian, in order to investigate numerically light localization and cooperative effects. We also discuss the fundamental differences existing between the real situation where light is considered as a vector wave and its scalar approximation easier to treat analytically. The second chapter focuses on the numerical results where we compare systematically the scalar and the vector cases. We show that the scalar approximation, valid for spatially dilute systems, leads to drastic differences compared to the vector case when we consider spatially dense clouds. We also do not observe sufficient proofs to establish that cooperative effects are not at the origin of light localization mechanisms. In the last chapter we investigate experimentally the signatures of cooperative effects in the multiple scattering regime, comparing our results to several theoretical approaches taking or not into account interference effects related to the wave nature of light.
