This article reviews recent research towards a universal light-matterinterface. Such an interface is an important prerequisite for long distancequantum communication, entanglement assisted sensing and measurement, as wellas for scalable photonic quantum computation. We review the developments inlight-matter interfaces based on room temperature atomic vapors interactingwith propagating pulses via the Faraday effect. This interaction has long beenused as a tool for quantum nondemolition detections of atomic spins via light.It was discovered recently that this type of light-matter interaction canactually be tuned to realize more general dynamics, enabling better performanceof the light-matter interface as well as rendering tasks possible, which werebefore thought to be impractical. This includes the realization of improvedentanglement assisted and backaction evading magnetometry approaching theQuantum Cramer-Rao limit, quantum memory for squeezed states of light and thedissipative generation of entanglement. A separate, but related, experiment onentanglement assisted cold atom clock showing the Heisenberg scaling ofprecision is described. We also review a possible interface between collectiveatomic spins with nano- or micromechanical oscillators, providing a linkbetween atomic and solid state physics approaches towards quantum informationprocessing.
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