  Due to its coherence properties and high optical depth, a Bose-Einstein
condensate provides an ideal setting to investigate collective atom-light
interactions. Superradiant light scattering in a Bose-Einstein condensate is a
fascinating example of such an interaction. It is an analogous process to Dicke
superradiance, in which an electronically inverted sample decays collectively,
leading to the emission of one or more light pulses in a well-defined
direction. Through time-resolved measurements of the superradiant light pulses
emitted by an end-pumped BEC, we study the close connection of superradiant
light scattering with Dicke superradiance. A 1D model of the system yields good
agreement with the experimental data and shows that the dynamics results from
the structures that build up in the light and matter-wave fields along the BEC.
This paves the way for exploiting the atom-photon correlations generated by the
superradiance.
