  We investigate the dynamics of matter and optical waves at the early stage of
superradiant Rayleigh scattering from Bose-Einstein Condensates. Our analysis
is within a spatially dependent quantum model which is capable of providing
analytic solutions for the operators of interest. The predictions of the
present model are compared to the predictions of a closely related mean field
model, and we provide a procedure that allows one to calculate quantum
expectation values by averaging over semiclassical solutions. The coherence
properties of the outgoing scattered light are also analyzed, and it is shown
that the corresponding correlation functions may provide detailed information
about the internal dynamics of the system.
