Operators on complemented posets

Abstract

Given a complemented poset P, we can assign to every element x of P the set x^+ of all its complements. We study properties of the operator ^+ on P, in particular, we are interested in the case when x^+ forms an antichain or when ^+ is involutive or antitone. We apply ^+ to the set Min U(x,y) of all minimal elements of the upper cone U(x,y) of x,y and to the set Max L(x,y) of all maximal elements of the lower cone L(x,y) of x,y. By using ^+ we define four binary operators on P and investigate their properties that are close to adjointness. We present an example of a uniquely complemented poset that is not Boolean. In the last section we study the orthogonality relation induced by complementation. We characterize when two elements of the Dedekind-MacNeille completion of P are orthogonal to each other. Finally, we extend the orthogonality relation from elements to subsets and we prove that two non-empty subsets of P are orthogonal to each other if and only if their convex hulls are orthogonal to each other within the poset of all non-empty convex subsets of P.