Quantities invariant under local unitary transformations are of natural interest in the study of entanglement. This paper deduces and studies a particularly simple quantity that is constructed from a combination of two standard permutations of the density matrix, namely, realignment and partial transpose. This bipartite quantity, denoted here as
R12, vanishes on large classes of separable states including classical-quantum correlated states, while being maximum for only maximally entangled states. It is shown to be naturally related to the 3-tangle in three-qubit states via their two-qubit reduced density matrices. Upper and lower bounds on concurrence and negativity of two-qubit density matrices for all ranks are given in terms of
R12. Ansatz states satisfying these bounds are given and verified using various numerical methods. In the rank-2 case, it is shown that the states satisfying the lower bound on
R12 versus concurrence define a class of three-qubit states that maximize the tripartite entanglement (the 3-tangle) given an amount of entanglement between a pair of them. The measure
R12 is conjectured, via numerical sampling, to be always larger than the concurrence and negativity. In particular, this is shown to be true for the physically interesting case of
X states.
I calculate the mixed three-tangle ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{3}[\ensuremath{\rho}]$ for the reduced density matrices of the four-qubit representant states found in Phys. Rev. A 65, 052112 (2002). In most of the cases, the convex roof is obtained, except for one class, where I provide with an upper bound, which is assumed to be very close to the convex roof. I compare with results published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 110501 (2014). Since the method applied there usually results in higher values for the upper bound, in certain cases it can be understood that the convex roof is obtained exactly, namely, when the zero-polytope where ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{3}$ vanishes shrinks to a single point.