On the representation of local indistinguishability operators

This paper studies local indistinguishability operators, i.e., symmetric and transitive fuzzy relations that do not need to be reflexive. This is an important generalization of global indistinguishability relations (fuzzy relations satisfying the reflexivity property in addition) because there are interesting families of fuzzy relations that are non-reflexive. One case are decomposable relations, that are generated by a fuzzy subset and contains the t-norms as an important subfamily. Also the relations associated naturally to fuzzy subgroups are local indistinguishability operators. In this paper these relations will be studied stressing the way they can be generated. A representation theorem will be proved and related to the concepts of extensionality and of fuzzy rough set. Decomposable local indistinguishability operators will also be studied and related with one-dimensional ones in the sense of the previous representation theorem. The presence of these relations in the study of fuzzy subgroups will also be analyzed. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.