Noncommutative ordered spaces: examples and counterexamples

In order to introduce the notion of causality in noncommutative geometry, it is necessary to extend Gelfand theory to the context of ordered spaces. In a previous work we have already given an algebraic characterization of the set of non-decreasing continuous functions on a certain class of topological ordered spaces. Such a set is called an isocone, and there exist at least two versions of them (strong and weak) which coincide in the commutative case. In this paper, we introduce yet another breed of isocones, ultraweak isocones, which has a simpler definition with a clear physical meaning. We show that ultraweak and weak isocones are in fact the same, and completely classify those that live in a finite-dimensional C*-algebra, hence corresponding to finite noncommutative ordered spaces. We also give some examples in infinite dimension.