Group-theoretical Structure of the Entangled States of N Identical Particles

We provide a group-theoretical classification of the entangled states of N identical particles. The connection between quantum entanglement and the exchange symmetry of the states of N identical particles is made explicit using the duality between the permutation group and the simple unitary group. Each particle has n-levels and spans the n-dimensional Hilbert space. We shall call the general state of the particle as a qunit. The direct product of the N qunit space is given a decomposition in terms of states with definite permutation symmetry. The nature of fundamental entanglement of a state can be related to the classes of partitions of the integer N. The maximally entangled states are generated from linear combinations of the less entangled states of the direct product space. We also discuss the nature of maximal entanglement and its measures.