  A general mathematical framework is presented to describe local equivalence
classes of multipartite quantum states under the action of local unitary and
local filtering operations. This yields multipartite generalizations of the
singular value decomposition. The analysis naturally leads to the introduction
of entanglement measures quantifying the multipartite entanglement (as
generalizations of the concurrence and the 3-tangle), and the optimal local
filtering operations maximizing these entanglement monotones are obtained.
Moreover a natural extension of the definition of GHZ-states to e.g. $2\times
2\times N$ systems is obtained.
