An Additive and Operational Entanglement Measure: Conditional Entanglement of Mutual Information

Abstract

Based on the monogamy of entanglement, we develop the technique of quantum conditioning to build an additive entanglement measure: the conditional entanglement of mutual information. Its operational meaning is elaborated to be the minimal net "flow of qubits" in the process of partial state merging. The result and conclusion can also be generalized to multipartite entanglement cases.