Tolerance relations and quantization (Q2156090)

Recall that a tolerance relation is a reflexive and symmetric, but not necessarily transitive, relation \(R\subset X\times X\) on a set \(X\). When \(R\) is also transitive, i.e. an equivalence relation, it defines a groupoid with unit space \(X\), and a convolution algebra can be canonically constructed from functions on this groupoid (under various suitable technical conditions like \(X\) being discrete plus functions having a finite support). In this paper, the authors study a naturally extended notion of such convolution algebra for tolerance relations, which actually gives a (not necessarily associative) algebra structure to the operator system associated with a tolerance relation by Connes and van Suijlekom motivated by the coarse graining in physics and spectral truncation in noncommutative geometry. Various interesting examples including a positive operator valued measure are provided, and some connection to the truncation of algebras is made. Special attention is given to the case of a tolerance relation \(R\) on a finite set \(X\) with the associated convolution algebra denoted as \(A\left( R\right) \) and called the tolerance algebra associated to \(R\), including the study of positive elements, state space, and pure states for the algebra \(A\left( R\right) \).