Quotients of partial abelian monoids

Abstract.

A hierarchy of partial abelian structures is considered. In an order of decreasing generality, these structures include partial abelian monoids (PAM), cancellative PAMs (CPAM), effect algebras (or D-posets), orthoalgebras, orthomodular posets (OMP) and orthomodular lattices (OML). If P is a PAM, the concepts of a congruence $\sim$ on P and a quotient P $// \sim$ are defined. Similar definitions are given for quotients of higher level categories in the hierarchy. The notion of a Riesz ideal I on a CPAM P is defined and it is shown that I generates a congruence on P. The corresponding quotients P/I for categories in the hierarchy are studied. It is shown that a subset I of an OML is a Riesz ideal if and only if I is a p-ideal. Moreover, for effect algebras, we show that congruences generated by Riesz ideals are precisely those that are given by a perspectivity. The paper includes a large number of counterexamples and examples that illustrate various concepts.