Ultracold Atoms and Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics: Building a Resource for Quantum Information

We report our progress towards an atom-photon node using cavity QED. Our system utilizes a far detuned optical lattice to transport cold atoms into a high finesse cavity, anywhere from a single atom to several thousand. We will present our ongoing investigations with this system. In particular we have studied effect of varying coupling on the cavity spectrum with multiple hyperfine levels.