 Orthogonal idempotent

Distinct idempotents are orthogonal when their products in both orders vanish. A finite family summing to one gives a decomposition $M={⨁}_i{e}_{i}M$ of every left module as a vector space; the summands need not be submodules unless the idempotents are central. Vertex idempotents of a path algebra supply the spaces of its quiver representation.