Multipartite entanglement transfer in spin chains

•Multipartite entanglement transfer.•Spin chains for quantum information tasks.•Many-body dynamics in quadratic models.•Perturbative analysis of weak-coupling dynamics. We investigate the transfer of genuine multipartite entanglement across a spin-12 chain with nearest-neighbour XX-type interaction. We focus on the perturbative regime, where a block of spins is weakly coupled at each edge of a quantum wire, embodying the role of a multiqubit sender and receiver, respectively. We find that high-quality multipartite entanglement transfer is achieved at the same time that three excitations are transferred to the opposite edge of the chain. Moreover, we find that both a finite concurrence and tripartite negativity is attained at much shorter time, making GHZ-distillation protocols feasible. Finally, we investigate the robustness of our protocol with respect to non-perturbative couplings and increasing lengths of the quantum wire.