English

Categories of orthosets and adjointable maps

Logic 2025-10-29 v3 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

An orthoset is a non-empty set together with a symmetric and irreflexive binary relation \perp, called the orthogonality relation. An orthoset with 0 is an orthoset augmented with an additional element 0, called falsity, which is orthogonal to every element. The collection of subspaces of a Hilbert space that are spanned by a single vector provides a motivating example. We say that a map f ⁣:XYf \colon X \to Y between orthosets with 0 possesses the adjoint g ⁣:YXg \colon Y \to X if, for any xXx \in X and yYy \in Y, f(x)yf(x) \perp y if and only if xg(y)x \perp g(y). We call ff in this case adjointable. For instance, any bounded linear map between Hilbert spaces induces a map with this property. We discuss in this paper adjointability from several perspectives and we put a particular focus on maps preserving the orthogonality relation. We moreover investigate the category OS of all orthosets with 0 and adjointable maps between them. We especially focus on the full subcategory iOS of irredundant orthosets with 0. iOS can be made into a dagger category, the dagger of a morphism being its unique adjoint. iOS contains dagger subcategories of various sorts and provides in particular a framework for the investigation of projective Hilbert spaces.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.04482,
  title  = {Categories of orthosets and adjointable maps},
  author = {Jan Paseka and Thomas Vetterlein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.04482},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

In this version, the erroneous Proposition 6.10 is corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:59:49.522Z