  We show that a singlet of many multi-level quantum systems arises naturally
as the ground state of a physically-motivated Hamiltonian. The Hamiltonian
simply exchanges the states of nearest-neighbours in some network of qudits
(d-level systems); the results are independent of the strength of the couplings
or the network's topology. We show that local measurements on some of these
qudits project the unmeasured qudits onto a smaller singlet, regardless of the
choice of measurement basis at each measurement. It follows that the
entanglement is highly persistent, and that through local measurements, a large
amount of entanglement may be established between spatially-separated parties
for subsequent use in distributed quantum computation.
