Fibrations of algebras

Abstract

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