16 - On quantum information manifolds

Summary

Introduction

The aim of information geometry is to introduce a suitable geometrical structure on families of probability distributions or quantum states. For parametrised statistical models, such structure is based on two fundamental notions: the Fisher information and the exponential family with its dual mixed parametrisation, see for example (Amari 1985, Amari and Nagaoka 2000).

For the non-parametric situation, the solution was given by Pistone and Sempi (Pistone and Sempi 1995, Pistone and Rogantin 1999), who introduced a Banach manifold structure on the set P of probability distributions, equivalent to a given one. For each µ ∈ ρ, the authors considered the non-parametric exponential family at µ. As it turned out, this provides a C^∞-atlas on ρ, with the exponential Orlicz spaces Lφ(µ) as the underlying Banach spaces, here φ is the Young function of the form φ(x) = cosh(x) — 1.

The present contribution deals with the case of quantum states: we want to introduce a similar manifold structure on the set of faithful normal states of a von Neumann algebra M. Since there is no suitable definition of a non-commutative Orlicz space with respect to a state φ, it is not clear how to choose the Banach space for the manifold. Of course, there is a natural Banach space structure, inherited from the predualM. But, as it was already pointed out in (Streater 2004), this structure is not suitable to define the geometry of states: for example, any neighbourhood of a state φ contains states such that the relative entropy with respect to φ is infinite.