An additive and operational entanglement measure: conditional entanglement of mutual information

Based on the monogamy of entanglement, we develop the technique of quantum conditioning to build an {\it additive} entanglement measure: the conditional entanglement of mutual information. Its {\it 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.