We study the problem of detecting multipartite entanglement among indistinguishable fermionic particles. A multipartite concurrence for pure states of $N$ identical fermions, each one having a $d$-dimensional single-particle Hilbert space, is introduced. Such an entanglement measure, in particular, is optimized for maximally entangled states of three identical fermions that play a role analogous to the usual (qubit) Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state. In addition, it is shown that the fermionic multipartite concurrence can be expressed as the mean value of an observable, provided two copies of the composite state are available.

We assess whether a confined Wigner molecule constituted by $2N$ fermions behaves as $N$ bosons or $2N$ fermions. Following the work by Law [ Phys. Rev. A 71, 034306 (2005)] and Chudzicki et al. [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 070402 (2010)] we discuss the physical meaning and the reason why a large amount of entanglement is needed in order to ensure a bosonic composite behavior. By applying a composite boson ansatz, we found that a Wigner molecule confined in a two-dimensional trap presents a bosonic behavior induced by symmetry. The two-particle Wigner molecule ground state required by the composite boson ansatz was obtained within the harmonic approximation in the strong interacting regime. Our approach allows us to address few-particle states (widely studied within a variety of theoretical and numerical techniques) as well as a large number of particles (difficult to address due to computational costs). For a large number of particles, we found strong fermionic correlations exposed by the suppression of particle fluctuations. For a small number of particles, we show that the wave function calculated within the composite boson ansatz captures the Friedel-Wigner transition. The latter is shown in a regime in which strong correlations due to the Pauli exclusion principle arise; therefore, we conclude that the coboson ansatz reproduces the many-particle physics of a confined Wigner molecule, even in the presence of strong deviations of the ideal bosonic behavior due to fermionic correlations.

The study of entanglement in systems composed of identical particles raises interesting challenges with far-reaching implications in both, our fundamental understanding of the physics of composite quantum systems, and our capability of exploiting quantum indistinguishability as a resource in quantum information theory. Impressive theoretical and experimental advances have been made in the last decades that bring us closer to a deeper comprehension and to a better control of entanglement. Yet, when it involves composites of indistinguishable quantum systems, the very meaning of entanglement, and hence its characterization, still finds controversy and lacks a widely accepted definition. The aim of the present paper is to introduce, within an accessible and self-contained exposition, the basic ideas behind one of the approaches advanced towards the construction of a coherent definition of entanglement in systems of indistinguishable particles, with focus on fermionic systems. We also inquire whether the corresponding tools developed for studying entanglement in identical-fermion systems can be exploited when analysing correlations in distinguishable-party systems, in which the complete information of the individual parts is not available. Further, we open the discussion on the broader problem of constructing a suitable framework that accommodates entanglement in the presence of generalized statistics. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics’.

We analyze the dynamics of entanglement due to decoherence in a system of two identical fermions with spin 3/2 interacting with a global bosonic environment. We make use of an appropriate measure of the so-called fermionic entanglement to quantify the fermionic correlations, and compare the dynamical effects due to decoherence with those that arise in a pair of distinguishable qubits immersed in the same environment. According to the system’s initial state, three types of qualitatively different dynamics are identified: i) invariant regime , corresponding to initial states that belong to a decoherence free subspace (DFS), which maintain invariant their entanglement and coherence throughout the evolution; ii) exponential decay , corresponding to initial states orthogonal to the DFS, and evolve towards states whose entanglement and coherence decrease exponentially; iii) entanglement sudden death , corresponding to initial states that have some overlap with the DFS and exhibit a richer dynamics leading, in particular, to the sudden death of the fermionic entanglement, while the coherence decays exponentially. Our analysis offers insights into the dynamics of entanglement in open systems of identical particles and into the existence of decoherence free subspaces and entanglement sudden death in indistinguishable-fermion systems.

The understanding of the behavior of systems of identical composite bosons has progressed significantly in connection with the analysis of the entanglement between constituents and the development of coboson theory. The basis of these treatments is a coboson ansatz for the ground state of a system of $N$ pairs, stating that in appropriate limits this state is well approximated by the account of Pauli exclusion in what would otherwise be the product state of $N$ independent pairs, each described by the single-pair ground state. In this work we study the validity of this ansatz for particularly simple problems, and show that short-range attractive interactions in very dilute limits and a single-pair ground state with very large entanglement are not enough to render the ansatz valid. On the contrary, we find that the dimensionality of the problem plays a crucial role in the behavior of the many-body ground state.