Universal measure of entanglement

A general framework is developed for separating classical and quantum correlations in a multipartite system. Entanglement is defined as the difference in the correlation information encoded by the state of a system and a suitably defined separable state with the same marginals. A generalization of the Schmidt decomposition is developed to implement the separation of correlations for any pure, multipartite state. The measure based on this decomposition is a generalization of the entanglement of formation to multipartite systems, provides an upper bound for the relative entropy of entanglement, and is directly computable on pure states. The example of pure three-qubit states is analyzed in detail, and a classification based on minimal, four-term decompositions is developed.