Generation of multipartite entangled states for chains of atoms in the framework of cavity-QED

Cavity quantum electrodynamics is a research field that studies electromagnetic fields in confined spaces and the radiative properties of atoms in such fields. Experimentally, the simplest example of such system is a single atom interacting with modes of a high-finesse resonator. Theoretically, such system bears an excellent framework for quantum information processing in which atoms and light are interpreted as bits of quantum information and their mutual interaction provides a controllable entanglement mechanism. In this thesis, we present several practical schemes for generation of multipartite entangled states for chains of atoms which pass through one or more high-finesse resonators. In the first step, we propose two schemes for generation of one- and two-dimensional cluster states of arbitrary size. These schemes are based on the resonant interaction of a chain of Rydberg atoms with one or more microwave cavities. In the second step, we propose a scheme for generation of multipartite W states. This scheme is based on the off-resonant interaction of a chain of three-level atoms with an optical cavity and a laser beam. We describe in details all the individual steps which are required to realize the proposed schemes and, moreover, we discuss several techniques to reveal the non-classical correlations associated with generated small-sized entangled states. (orig.)