A divergence center interpretation of general symmetric Kubo-Ando means, and related weighted multivariate operator means

It is well known that special Kubo-Ando operator means admit divergence center interpretations, moreover, they are also mean squared error estimators for certain metrics on positive definite operators. In this paper we give a divergence center interpretation for every symmetric Kubo-Ando mean. This characterization of the symmetric means naturally leads to a definition of weighted and multivariate versions of a large class of symmetric Kubo-Ando means. We study elementary properties of these weighted multivariate means, and note in particular that in the special case of the geometric mean we recover the weighted $\mathcal{A} \# \mathcal{H}$-mean introduced by Kim, Lawson, and Lim.