Quantum Hellinger distances revisited

Abstract: This short note aims to study quantum Hellinger distances investigated recently by Bhatia et al. [Lett. Math. Phys. 109 (2019), 1777-1804] with a particular emphasis on barycenters. We introduce the family of generalized quantum Hellinger divergences, that are of the form $\phi(A,B)=\mathrm{Tr} \left((1-c)A + c B - A \sigma B \right),$ where $\sigma$ is an arbitrary Kubo-Ando mean, and $c \in (0,1)$ is the weight of $\sigma.$ We note that these divergences belong to the family of maximal quantum $f$-divergences, and hence are jointly convex and satisfy the data processing inequality (DPI). We derive a characterization of the barycenter of finitely many positive definite operators for these generalized quantum Hellinger divergences. We note that the characterization of the barycenter as the weighted multivariate $1/2$-power mean, that was claimed in the work of Bhatia et al. mentioned above, is true in the case of commuting operators, but it is not correct in the general case.