  Entanglement may be considered a resource for quantum-information processing,
as the origin of robust and universal equilibrium behaviour, but also as a
limit to the validity of an effective potential approach, in which the
influence of certain interacting subsystems is treated as a potential. Here we
show that a closed three particle (two protons, one electron) model of a He-ion
featuring realistic size, interactions and energy scales of electron and
nucleus, respectively, exhibits different types of dynamics depending on the
initial state: For some cases the traditional approach, in which the nucleus
only appears as the center of a Coulomb potential, is valid, in others this
approach fails due to entanglement arising on a short time-scale. Eventually
the system can even show signatures of thermodynamical behaviour, i.e. the
electron may relax to a maximum local entropy state which is, to some extent,
independent of the details of the initial state.
