Commuting squares and a new relative entropy (Q1389869)

Let \(M\) and \(N\) be von Neumann subalgebras of a finite von Neumann algebra. We shall present another generalization \(S(M| N)\) of the classical conditional entropy in a noncommutative frame which is not identical with the Connes-Størmer relative entropy \(H(M| N)\). Y. Watatani and J. Wierzbicki computed the relative entropy \(H(M| N)\) for two subfactors \(M\) and \(N\) of a factor of type \(\text{II}_1\) without assuming \(N\subset M\), which extended the classical formula \(h(P, Q)= h(P\vee Q,Q)\) in ergodic theory to the noncommutative case. In this note, we shall show that the commuting square condition implies \(S(M| N)= S(M| M\cap N)\) and the commuting square condition for commutants implies \(S(M| N)= S(M\vee N| N)\).