Persistent Entanglement in Arrays of Interacting Particles

We study the entanglement properties of a class of $N$-qubit quantum states that are generated in arrays of qubits with an Ising-type interaction. These states contain a large amount of entanglement as given by their Schmidt measure. They also have a high persistency of entanglement which means that $\sim N/2$ qubits have to be measured to disentangle the state. These states can be regarded as an entanglement resource since one can generate a family of other multiparticle entangled states such as the generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states of $<N/2$ qubits by simple measurements and classical communication.