Gradual transitivity in orthogonality spaces of finite rank (Q2029455)

D. J. Foulis and his collaborators proposed in the mid-1960s the notion of orthogonality space, to characterise the basic model used in quantum physics, i.e., Hilbert spaces [\textit{A. Wilce}, in: Handbook of quantum logic and quantum structures. Quantum logic. With a foreword by Anatolij Dvurečenskij. Amsterdam: Elsevier/North-Holland. 443--549 (2009; Zbl 1273.81025)]. An orthogonality space is a pair \((X,\bot)\), where \(X\) is a non-empty set, and \(\bot\) is a symmetric and irreflexive binary relation on \(X\) (which is called orthogonality relation). Orthogonality spaces reduce the structure of Hilbert spaces to the necessary minimum. One of the main examples of orthogonality spaces provide projective Hilbert spaces equipped with the usual orthogonality relation. The present paper continues the study of the author on characterising complex Hilbert spaces as orthogonality spaces (cf., e.g., [\textit{T. Vetterlein}, Int. J. Geom. Methods Mod. Phys. 16, No. 5, Article ID 1950080, 24 p. (2019; Zbl 1421.81010); Int. J. Theor. Phys. 60, No. 2, 727--738 (2021; Zbl 1503.46020)]). The main idea is to suppose the existence of certain symmetries. In particular, the present paper points out a straightforward way of limiting the discussion to inner-product spaces. The author deals with the finite-dimensional case, i.e., assumes that all orthogonality spaces have a finite rank. He introduces the notion of linearity and establishes that any linear orthogonality space of a finite rank (bigger than or equal to~\(4\)) arises from an (anisotropic) Hermitian space over some skew field. The author is also interested in finding conditions implying that the skew field in question is among the classical ones, e.g., he shows that under certain conditions, the field of scalars is embeddable into the reals. The paper is well written, provides most of its required preliminaries (the omitted ones can be found in the references at the end of the paper), and will be of interest to researchers studying algebraic aspects of quantum physics.