Groupoids, idempotents and pointwise inverses in relational categories (Q760494)

The authors' summary: ''In this paper we investigate idempotents and regular elements of Dedekind categories (these appear to be a proper axiomatic framework for establishing certain aspects of binary relational categories. Classical techniques (using preorders and Green's equivalences) are replaced by techniques which use categories with adapted objects (idempotents), unities and universes. We extensively invesitigate the links between the groupoid of invertible elements in an idempotent category and the 'classical' isomorphisms. We also investigate relational algebras in which every morphism is regular. Part of this work is devoted to morphisms between total orders. In this context we discuss Guttman-Ferrers morphisms, and we shall prove that they are regulars.''