Uniqueness of Entanglement Measure and Thermodynamics

Vlatko Vedral, Elham Kashefi

Published 2001-12-21Version 1

We apply the axiomatic approach to thermodynamics presented by Giles to derive a unique measure of entanglement for bi-partite pure states. This implies that local manipulations of entanglement in quantum information theory and adiabatic transformations of states in thermodynamics have the same underlying mathematical structure. We discuss possible extensions of our results to mixed and multi-partite states.