Multipartite entanglement theory with entanglement-nonincreasing operations

A key problem in quantum information science is to determine optimal protocols for the interconversion of entangled states shared between remote parties. While for two parties a large number of results in this direction is available, the multipartite setting still remains a major challenge. In this article, this problem is addressed by extending the resource theory of entanglement for multipartite systems beyond the standard framework of local operations and classical communication. Specifically, we consider transformations capable of introducing a small, controllable increase of entanglement of a state, with the requirement that the increase can be made arbitrarily small. We demonstrate that in this adjusted framework, the transformation rates between multipartite states are fundamentally dictated by the bipartite entanglement entropies of the respective quantum states. Remarkably, this approach allows the reduction of tripartite entanglement to its bipartite analog, indicating that every pure tripartite state can be reversibly synthesized from a suitable number of singlets distributed between pairs of parties.