  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
article 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.
