Probing multipartite entanglement in a coupled Jaynes-Cummings system

We show how to probe multipartite entanglement in $N$ coupled Jaynes-Cummings cells where the degrees of freedom are the electronic energies of each of the $N$ atoms in separate single-mode cavities plus the $N$ single-mode fields themselves. Specifically we propose probing the combined system as though it is a dielectric medium. The spectral properties and transition rates directly reveal multipartite entanglement signatures. It is found that the Hilbert space of the $N$ cell system can be confined to the totally symmetric subspace of two states only that are maximally-entangled W states with 2N degrees of freedom.