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The possibility of creating and manipulating entangled states of systems of many particles is of significant interest for quantum information processing; such a capability could lead to new applications that rely on the basic principles of quantum mechanics 1. So far, up to four atoms have been entangled in a controlled way 2, 3. A crucial requirement for the production of entangled states is that they can be considered pure at the single-particle level. Bose–Einstein condensates 4, 5, 6 fulfil this requirement; hence it is natural to investigate whether they can also be used in some applications of quantum information. Here we propose a method to achieve substantial entanglement of a large number of atoms in a Bose–Einstein condensate. A single resonant laser pulse is applied to all the atoms in the condensate, which is then allowed to evolve freely; in this latter stage, collisional interactions produce entanglement …