Partial orders on the power sets of Baer rings
Let [Formula: see text] be a ring. Motivated by a generalization of a well-known minus partial order to Rickart rings, we introduce a new relation on the power set [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] and show that this relation, which we call “the minus order on [Formula: see text]”, is a partial order when [Formula: see text] is a Baer ring. We similarly introduce and study properties of the star, the left-star, and the right-star partial orders on the power sets of Baer ∗-rings. We show that some ideals generated by projections of a von Neumann regular and Baer ∗-ring [Formula: see text] form a lattice with respect to the star partial order on [Formula: see text]. As a particular case, we present characterizations of these orders on the power set of [Formula: see text], the algebra of all bounded linear operators on a Hilbert space [Formula: see text].