English

Fibrations of algebras

Category Theory 2024-08-30 v1

Abstract

We study fibrations arising from indexed categories of the following form: fix two categories A,X\mathcal{A},\mathcal{X} and a functor F:A×XXF : \mathcal{A} \times \mathcal{X} \longrightarrow\mathcal{X} , so that to each FA=F(A,)F_A=F(A,-) one can associate a category of algebras AlgX(FA)\mathbf{Alg}_\mathcal{X}(F_A) (or an Eilenberg-Moore, or a Kleisli category if each FAF_A is a monad). We call the functor AAlgA\int^{\mathcal{A}}\mathbf{Alg} \to \mathcal{A}, whose typical fibre over AA is the category AlgX(FA)\mathbf{Alg}_\mathcal{X}(F_A), the "fibration of algebras" obtained from FF. Examples of such constructions arise in disparate areas of mathematics, and are unified by the intuition that AAlg\int^\mathcal{A}\mathbf{Alg} is a form of semidirect product of the category A\mathcal{A}, acting on X\mathcal{X}, via the `representation' given by the functor F:A×XXF : \mathcal{A} \times \mathcal{X} \longrightarrow\mathcal{X}. After presenting a range of examples and motivating said intuition, the present work focuses on comparing a generic fibration with a fibration of algebras: we prove that if A\mathcal{A} has an initial object, under very mild assumptions on a fibration p:EAp : \mathcal{E}\longrightarrow \mathcal{A}, we can define a canonical action of A\mathcal{A} letting it act on the fibre E\mathcal{E}_\varnothing over the initial object. This result bears some resemblance to the well-known fact that the fundamental group π1(B)\pi_1(B) of a base space acts naturally on the fibers Fb=p1bF_b = p^{-1}b of a fibration p:EBp : E \to B.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.16581,
  title  = {Fibrations of algebras},
  author = {Danel Ahman and Greta Coraglia and Davide Castelnovo and Fosco Loregian and Nelson Martins-Ferreira and Ülo Reimaa},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.16581},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:27:45.333Z