  Atomic ensembles have shown to be a promising candidate for implementations
of quantum information processing by many recently-discovered schemes. All
these schemes are based on the interaction between optical beams and atomic
ensembles. For description of these interactions, one assumed either a
cavity-QED model or a one-dimensional light propagation model, which is still
inadequate for a full prediction and understanding of most of the current
experimental efforts which are actually taken in the three-dimensional free
space. Here, we propose a perturbative theory to describe the three-dimensional
effects in interaction between atomic ensembles and free-space light with a
level configuration important for several applications. The calculations reveal
some significant effects which are not known before from the other approaches,
such as the inherent mode-mismatching noise and the optimal mode-matching
conditions. The three-dimensional theory confirms the collective enhancement of
the signal-to-noise ratio which is believed to be one of the main advantage of
the ensemble-based quantum information processing schemes, however, it also
shows that this enhancement need to be understood in a more subtle way with an
appropriate mode matching method.
