Effects of indistinguishability in a system of three identical qubits

Quantum correlations of identical particles are important for quantum-enhanced technologies. The recently introduced non-standard approach to treat identical particles [G. Compagno et al., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 376, 20170317 (2018)] is here exploited to show the effect of particle indistinguishability on the characterization of entanglement of three identical qubits. We show that, by spatially localized measurements in separated regions, three independently-prepared separated qubits in a pure elementary state behave as distinguishable ones, as expected. On the other hand, delocalized measurements make it emerge a measurement-induced entanglement. We then find that three independently-prepared boson qubits under complete spatial overlap exhibit genuine three-partite entanglement. These results evidence the effect of spatial overlap on identical particle entanglement and show that the latter depends on both the quantum state and the type of measurement.