Regularity in Quantum Logic

Abstract

In 1996, Harding showed that the binarydecompositions of any algebraic, relational, ortopological structure X form an orthomodular poset FactX. Here, we begin an investigation of the structuralproperties of such orthomodular posets of decompositions.We show that a finite set S of binary decompositions inFact X is compatible if and only if all the binarydecompositions in S can be built from a common n-arydecomposition of X. This characterization ofcompatibility is used to show that for any algebraic,relational, or topological structure X, the orthomodularposet Fact X is regular. Special cases of this result include the known facts that theorthomodular posets of splitting subspaces of an innerproduct space are regular, and that the orthomodularposets constructed from the idempotents of a ring are regular. This result also establishes theregularity of the orthomodular posets that Mushtariconstructs from bounded modular lattices, theorthomodular posets one constructs from the subgroups ofa group, and the orthomodular posets oneconstructs from a normed group with operators. Moreover,all these orthomodular posets are regular for the samereason. The characterization of compatibility is also used to show that for any structure X, thefinite Boolean subalgebras of Fact X correspond tofinitary direct product decompositions of the structureX. For algebraic and relational structures X, this result is extended to show that the Booleansubalgebras of Fact X correspond to representations ofthe structure X as the global sections of a sheaf ofstructures over a Boolean space. The above results can be given a physical interpretation as well.Assume that the true or false questions $Q$ of a quantum mechanical system correspond tobinary direct product decompositions of the state spaceof the system, as is the case with the usual von Neumanninterpretation of quantum mechanics. Suppose S is asubset of $Q$. Then a necessary andsufficient condition that all questions in S can beanswered simultaneously is that any two questions in S can be answeredsimultaneously. Thus, regularity in quantum mechanicsfollows from the assumption that questions correspond todecompositions.