Atom-Photon Entanglement in a Cavity

Creating entanglement between distant nodes of a quantum network is a major task in quantum information processing. Deterministic creation of atom-photon entanglement would be a big step towards this aim since photons can travel large distances without decoherence. Entanglement swapping between two such atom-photon pairs should be a feasible way to entangle two distant atoms and thus realise a quantum repeater. Here, we show a way to achieve entanglement in a strongly coupled atom-cavity system.