Finite size effects in entangled rings of qubits

We study translationally invariant rings of qubits with a finite number of sites N, and find the maximal nearest-neighbor entanglement for a fixed z component of the total spin. For small numbers of sites our results are analytical. The use of a linearized version of the concurrence allows us to relate the maximal concurrence to the ground state energy of an XXZ spin model, and to calculate it numerically for N<25. We point out some interesting finite-size effects. Finally, we generalize our results beyond nearest neighbors.