Abstract
It is shown that, despite strong nonlinearity, entanglement of formation of a two-qubit state can be measured without prior state reconstruction. Collective measurements on a small number of copies are provided that allow one to determine quantum concurrence via estimation of only four parameters. It is also pointed out that another entanglement measure based on so-called “negativity” can also be measured in a similar way. The result is related to the general problem: What kind of information can be extracted efficiently from an unknown quantum state?