Maximum Entropy and Sufficiency

Abstract

The notion of Bregman divergence and sufficiency will be defined on general convex state spaces. It is demonstrated that only spectral sets can have a Bregman divergence that satisfies a sufficiency condition. Positive elements with trace 1 in a Jordan algebra are examples of spectral sets, and the most important example is the set of density matrices with complex entries. It is conjectured that information theoretic considerations lead directly to the notion of Jordan algebra under some regularity conditions.