Operator means, barycenters, and fixed point equations

Abstract

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.