Quantum entanglement in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

We propose a scheme to generate and detect various kinds of quantum entanglement in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate. It is shown that substantial many-particle entanglement can be generated directly in the spin-1 condensate by free dynamical evolution with a properly prepared initial state. The scheme also provides a simple method to generate three-mode entanglement in the second-quantization picture and to detect the continuous variable type of entanglement between two effective modes in the spin-1 condensate. ©2002 The American Physical Societ