Quantum steering is equivalent to state-preserving conditional expectations

Abstract

In systems with infinitely many degrees of freedom, fundamental results from quantum information theory can fail. An important example is the uniqueness of purifications: Even when two subsystems, described by commuting von Neumann algebras $A$ and $B$, are tomographically complete, purifications of a state on $A$ need not be related by unitaries in $B$. It was recently shown that this occurs precisely when Haag duality fails, i.e., when the commutant $B'$ is strictly larger than $A$. This raises the question of which fundamental entanglement properties survive in such a setting. We show that, for a pure global state, the ability to steer any ensemble decomposition of the marginal state on $A$ by measurements on $B$ is equivalent to the existence of a state-preserving conditional expectation from $B'$ onto $A$. This establishes a direct connection between quantum steering and subfactor theory. The key observation is that steering is equivalent to the existence of extensions of ensemble decompositions from $A$ to $B'$. Working with general Jordan algebras, we prove that unital positive maps have state-preserving left inverses if and only if ensemble decompositions can be lifted. For the inclusion $A\hookrightarrow B'$, a left inverse is precisely a conditional expectation, yielding the characterization above.