Abstract We define a new divergence of von Neumann algebras using a variational expression similar in nature to Kosaki’s formula for Umegaki’s relative entropy. Our divergence satisfies several of the usual desirable properties, upper bounds the sandwiched Renyi entropy and reduces to the fidelity in a limit. As an illustration, we use the formula in quantum field theory to compute our divergence between the vacuum in a bipartite system and an “orbifolded”—in the sense of a conditional expectation—system in terms of the Jones index. We take the opportunity to point out an entropic certainty relation associated with an inclusion of von Neumann factors related to the relative entropy. This certainty relation has an equivalent formulation in terms of error correcting codes.
Barycentric Rényi divergences were introduced in [Mosonyi, Bunth, Vrana, Linear Algebra and its Applications, 2024] as an alternative to standard Kubo-Ando constructions to define multivariate quantum Rényi divergences. They are defined via a variational expression and depend on a finite collection of quantum relative entropies
Dqx. When all the relative entropies are monotone under CPTP maps then so are the corresponding barycentric Rényi divergences, and when all the relative entropies are additive then the corresponding barycentric Rényi divergences are subadditive under tensor product. Additivity has only been established before for the case where all
Dqx are chosen to be the Umegaki relative entropy, which is also the only case where the barycentric Rényi divergence (called the minimal one) was known to admit an explicit expression.
Here we settle the problem of additivity by showing that for any choice of monotone quantum relative entropies, the regularized barycentric Rényi divergence coincides with the minimal barycentric Rényi divergence on invertible inputs. This in turn implies that if at least two of the
Dqx are strictly larger than the Umegaki relative entropy (in a precise sense), then the resulting barycentric Rényi divergence is not even weakly additive.
I Entropies for Finite Quantum Systems.- 1 Fundamental Concepts.- 2 Postulates for Entropy and Relative Entropy.- 3 Convex Trace Functions.- II Entropies for General Quantum Systems.- 4 Modular Theory and Auxiliaries.- 5 Relative Entropy of States of Operator Algebras.- 6 From Relative Entropy to Entropy.- 7 Functionals of Entropy Type.- III Channeling Transformation and Coarse Graining.- 8 Channels and Their Transpose.- 9 Sufficient Channels and Measurements.- 10 Dynamical Entropy.- 11 Stationary Processes.- IV Perturbation Theory.- 12 Perturbation of States.- 13 Variational Expression of Perturbational Limits.- V Miscellanea.- 14 Central Limit and Quasi-free Reduction.- 15 Thermodynamics of Quantum Spin Systems.- 16 Entropic Uncertainty Relations.- 17 Temperley-Lieb Algebras and Index.- 18 Optical Communication Processes.