  We establish a generalisation of the fundamental state convertibility theorem
in quantum information to the context of bipartite quantum systems modelled by
commuting semi-finite von Neumann algebras. Namely, we establish a
generalisation to this setting of Nielsen's theorem on the convertibility of
quantum states under local operations and classical communication (LOCC)
schemes. Along the way, we introduce an appropriate generalisation of LOCC
operations and connect the resulting notion of approximate convertibility to
the theory of singular numbers and majorisation in von Neumann algebras. As an
application of our result in the setting of $II_1$-factors, we show that the
entropy of the singular value distribution relative to the unique tracial state
is an entanglement monotone in the sense of Vidal, thus yielding a new way to
quantify entanglement in that context. Building on previous work in the
infinite-dimensional setting, we show that trace vectors play the role of
maximally entangled states for general $II_1$-factors. Examples are drawn from
infinite spin chains, quasi-free representations of the CAR, and discretised
versions of the CCR.
