We study operator means more general than the Kubo-Ando means. They are given as minima of geodesically convex functions and allow uniquely defined extensions to any number of variables. Multivariate hyper-means is a class of means of this type bounded from below by the arithmetic mean. We extend the definition of a hyper-man in the bivariate case and discover bivariate means that are not restrictions of the multivariate means studied earlier. We introduce the notion of reduced relative quantum entropy and prove that it is convex. The result is used to give a simplified proof of a theorem of Lieb and Seiringer.

The seminal work of Kubo and Ando (Math Ann 246:205–224, 1979/80) provided us with an axiomatic approach to means of positive operators. As most of their axioms are algebraic in nature, this approach has a clear algebraic flavour. On the other hand, it is highly natural to take the geomeric viewpoint and consider a distance (understood in a broad sense) on the cone of positive operators, and define the mean of positive operators by an appropriate notion of the center of mass. This strategy often leads to a fixed point equation that characterizes the mean. The aim of this survey is to highlight those cases where the algebraic and the geometric approaches meet each other.

Abstract In this paper the authors seek to trace in an accessible fashion the rapid recent development of the theory of the matrix geometric mean in the cone of positive definite matrices up through the closely related operator geometric mean in the positive cone of a unital $$C^*$$ C ∗ -algebra. The story begins with the two-variable matrix geometric mean, moves to the breakthrough developments in the multivariable matrix setting, the main focus of the paper, and then on to the extension to the positive cone of the $$C^*$$ C ∗ -algebra of operators on a Hilbert space, even to general unital $$C^*$$ C ∗ -algebras, and finally to the consideration of barycentric maps that grow out of the geometric mean on the space of integrable probability measures on the positive cone. Besides expected tools from linear algebra and operator theory, one observes a surprisingly substantial interplay with geometrical notions in metric spaces, particularly the notion of nonpositive curvature. Added features include a glance at the probabilistic theory of random variables with values in a metric space of nonpositive curvature, and the appearance of related means such as the inductive and power means. The authors also consider in a much briefer fashion the extension of the theory to the setting of Lie groups and briefer still to the positive symmetric cones of finite-dimensional Euclidean Jordan algebras.