From superradiant Rayleigh scattering to Bragg scattering

We present the results of an experiment on light scattering from an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate interacting with far off resonant laser light. Due to superradiant Rayleigh scattering a coherent superposition of two atomic wavepackets with different momenta forms in the presence of a single laser beam. Varying the intensity of a weak counterpropagating laser beam we observe the transition from the pure superradiant regime to the Bragg scattering regime, where Rabi oscillations in a two-level system are observed. The process is limited by the decoherence between the two atomic wavepackets.