Groverian measure of entanglement for mixed states

The Groverian entanglement measure, introduced earlier for pure quantum states of multiple qubits [O. Biham, M.A. Nielsen, and T. Osborne, Phys. Rev. A 65, 062312 (2002)], is generalized to the case of mixed states. The Groverian measure of a mixed state of n qubits is obtained by a purification procedure into a pure state of 2n qubits, followed by an optimization process, before the resulting state is fed into Grover's search algorithm. It is expressed in terms of the maximal success probability of the algorithm and in this sense provides an operational measure of entanglement.