Categories of orthosets and adjointable maps

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 $f \colon X \to Y$ between orthosets with 0 possesses the adjoint $g \colon Y \to X$ if, for any $x \in X$ and $y \in Y$, $f(x) \perp y$ if and only if $x \perp g(y)$. We call $f$ 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.