Multiparticle generalization of entanglement swapping

We generalize the procedure of entanglement swapping to obtain a scheme for manipulating entanglement in multiparticle systems. We describe how this scheme allows one to establish multiparticle entanglement be tween particles belonging to distant users in a communication network through a prior distribution of singlets followed by only local measurements. We show that this scheme can be regarded as a method of generating entangled states of many particles and compare it with existing schemes using simple quantum computational networks. We highlight the practical advantages of using a series of entanglement swappings during the distribution of entangled particles between two parties. Applications of multiparticle entangled states in cryptographic conferencing and in reading messages from more than one source through a single measurement are also described.