  We define a negative entanglement measure for separable states which shows
that how much entanglement one should compensate the unentangled state at least
for changing it into an entangled state. For two-qubit systems and some special
classes of states in higher-dimensional systems, the explicit formula and the
lower bounds for the negative entanglement measure have been presented, and it
always vanishes for bipartite separable pure states. The negative entanglement
measure can be used as a useful quantity to describe the entanglement dynamics
and the quantum phase transition. In the transverse Ising model, the first
derivatives of negative entanglement measure diverge on approaching the
critical value of the quantum phase transition, although these two-site reduced
density matrices have no entanglement at all. In the 1D Bose-Hubbard model, the
NEM as a function of $t/U$ changes from zero to negative on approaching the
critical point of quantum phase transition.
