An observable measure of entanglement for pure states of multi-qubit systems

Recently, Meyer and Wallach [Meyer and Wallach (2002), J. of Math. Phys., 43, pp. 4273] proposed a measure of multi-qubit entanglement that is a function on pure states. We find that this function can be interpreted as a physical quantity related to the average purity of the constituent qubits and show how it can be observed in an efficient manner without the need for full quantum state tomography. A possible realization is described for measuring the entanglement of a chain of atomic qubits trapped in a 3D optical lattice.