Deterministic Atom–Light Quantum Interface

Abstract The notion of an atom–light quantum interface has been developed in the past decade, to a large extent due to demands within the new field of quantum information processing and communication. A promising type of such interface using large atomic ensembles has emerged in the past several years. In this chapter we review this area of research with a special emphasis on deterministic high fidelity quantum information protocols. Two recent experiments, entanglement of distant atomic objects and quantum memory for light are described in detail.