Wigner-Yanase information on quantum state space: The geometric approach

In the search of appropriate Riemannian metrics on quantum state space, the concept of statistical monotonicity, or contraction under coarse graining, has been proposed by Chentsov. The metrics with this property have been classified by Petz. All the elements of this family of geometries can be seen as quantum analogs of Fisher information. Although there exists a number of general theorems shedding light on this subject, many natural questions, also stemming from applications, are still open. In this paper we discuss a particular member of the family, the Wigner-Yanase information. Using a well-known approach that mimics the classical pull-back approach to Fisher information, we are able to give explicit formulas for the geodesic distance, the geodesic path, the sectional and scalar curvatures associated to Wigner-Yanase information. Moreover, we show that this is the only monotone metric for which such an approach is possible.(C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.