English

Dagger categories of orthosets and the complex Hilbert spaces

Rings and Algebras 2025-10-29 v1

Abstract

An orthoset is a non-empty set XX together with a symmetric binary relation \perp and a constant 00 such that x⊥̸xx \not\perp x for any x0x \neq 0, and 0x0 \perp x for any xx. Maps f ⁣:XYf \colon X \to Y and g ⁣:YXg \colon Y \to X between orthosets are said to form an adjoint pair if, for any xXx \in X and yYy \in Y, f(x)gf(x) \perp g if and only if xg(x)x \perp g(x). Hilbert spaces, equipped with the usual orthogonality relation and the zero vector, provide the motivating examples of orthosets. The usual adjoints of bounded linear maps between Hilbert spaces are adjoints also in our sense. We investigate dagger categories of orthosets and maps between them, requiring that any morphism and its dagger form an adjoint pair. We indicate conditions under which such a category is unitarily dagger equivalent to the dagger category of complex Hilbert spaces and bounded linear maps.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.24513,
  title  = {Dagger categories of orthosets and the complex Hilbert spaces},
  author = {Jan Paseka and Thomas Vetterlein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.24513},
  year   = {2025}
}