Production of genuine entangled states of four atomic qubits

We propose an optical scheme to generate genuine entangled states of four atomic qubits in optical cavities using a single-photon source, beam splitters and single photon detectors. We show how to generate deterministically sixteen orthonormal and independent genuine entangled states of four atomic qubits. It is found that the sixteen genuine entangled states form a new type of representation of the four-atomic-qubit system, i.e., the genuine entangled-state representation. This representation brings new interesting insight onto better understanding multipartite entanglement.