Detection of multipartite entanglement in the vicinity of symmetric Dicke states

We present methods for detecting entanglement around symmetric Dicke states. In particular, we consider N-qubit symmetric Dicke states with N/2 excitations. In the first part of the paper we show that for large N these states have the smallest overlap possible with states without genuine multi-partite entanglement. Thus these states are particulary well suited for the experimental examination of multi-partite entanglement. We present fidelity-based entanglement witness operators for detecting multipartite entanglement around these states. In the second part of the paper we consider entanglement criteria, somewhat similar to the spin squeezing criterion, based on the moments or variances of the collective spin operators. Surprisingly, these criteria are based on an upper bound for variances for separable states. We present both criteria detecting entanglement in general and criteria detecting only genuine multi-partite entanglement. The collective operator measured for our criteria is an important physical quantity: Its expectation value essentially gives the intensity of the radiation when a coherent atomic cloud emits light.