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A category of FI type is one which is sufficiently similar to finite sets and injections so as to admit nice representation stability results. Several common examples admit a Grothendieck fibration to finite sets and injections. We begin by carefully reviewing the theory of fibrations of categories with motivating examples relevant to algebra and representation theory. We classify which functors between FI type categories are fibrations, and thus obtain sufficient conditions for an FI type category to be the result of a Grothendieck construction., Comment: 23 pages, added a "future work and open questions" section, comments welcome

We define a thermostatic system to be a convex space of states together with a concave function sending each state to its entropy, which is an extended real number. This definition applies to classical thermodynamics, classical statistical mechanics, quantum statistical mechanics, and also generalized probabilistic theories of the sort studied in quantum foundations. It also allows us to treat a heat bath as a thermostatic system on an equal footing with any other. We construct an operad whose operations are convex relations from a product of convex spaces to a single convex space, and prove that thermostatic systems are algebras of this operad. This gives a general, rigorous formalism for combining thermostatic systems, which captures the fact that such systems maximize entropy subject to whatever constraints are imposed upon them., Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures

It is known that the Grothendieck group of the category of Schur functors is the ring of symmetric functions. This ring has a rich structure, much of which is encapsulated in the fact that it is a "plethory": a monoid in the category of birings with its substitution monoidal structure. We show that similarly the category of Schur functors is a "2-plethory", which descends to give the plethory structure on symmetric functions. Thus, much of the structure of symmetric functions exists at a higher level in the category of Schur functors., Comment: 53 pages

In this thesis, we present a flexible framework for specifying and constructing operads which are suited to reasoning about network construction. The data used to present these operads is called a \emph{network model}, a monoidal variant of Joyal's combinatorial species. The construction of the operad required that we develop a monoidal lift of the Grothendieck construction. We then demonstrate how concepts like priority and dependency can be represented in this framework. For the former, we generalize Green's graph products of groups to the context of universal algebra. For the latter, we examine the emergence of monoidal fibrations from the presence of catalysts in Petri nets., Comment: Ph.D. Thesis, 151 pages

Petri networks and network models are two frameworks for the compositional design of systems of interacting entities. Here we show how to combine them using the concept of a "catalyst": an entity that is neither destroyed nor created by any process it engages in. In a Petri net, a place is a catalyst if its in-degree equals its out-degree for every transition. We show how a Petri net with a chosen set of catalysts gives a network model. This network model maps any list of catalysts from the chosen set to the category whose morphisms are all the processes enabled by this list of catalysts. Applying the Grothendieck construction, we obtain a category fibered over the category whose objects are lists of catalysts. This category has as morphisms all processes enabled by some list of catalysts. While this category has a symmetric monoidal structure that describes doing processes in parallel, its fibers also have premonoidal structures that describe doing one process and then another while reusing the catalysts., Comment: 15 pages, TikZ figures

We lift the standard equivalence between fibrations and indexed categories to an equivalence between monoidal fibrations and monoidal indexed categories, namely weak monoidal pseudofunctors to the 2-category of categories. In doing so, we investigate the relation between this `global' monoidal structure where the total category is monoidal and the fibration strictly preserves the structure, and a `fibrewise' one where the fibres are monoidal and the reindexing functors strongly preserve the structure, first hinted by Shulman. In particular, when the domain is cocartesian monoidal, lax monoidal structures on the functor to the 2-category of categories correspond to lifts of the functor to the 2-category of monoidal categories. Finally, we give examples where this correspondence appears, spanning from the fundamental and family fibrations to network models and systems., Comment: 40 pages

Network models, which abstractly are given by lax symmetric monoidal functors, are used to construct operads for modeling and designing complex networks. Many common types of networks can be modeled with simple graphs with edges weighted by a monoid. A feature of the ordinary construction of network models is that it imposes commutativity relations between all edge components. Because of this, it cannot be used to model networks with bounded degree. In this paper, we construct the free network model on a given monoid, which can model networks with bounded degree. To do this, we generalize Green's graph products of groups to pointed categories which are finitely complete and cocomplete., Comment: 18 pages

Networks can be combined in various ways, such as overlaying one on top of another or setting two side by side. We introduce "network models" to encode these ways of combining networks. Different network models describe different kinds of networks. We show that each network model gives rise to an operad, whose operations are ways of assembling a network of the given kind from smaller parts. Such operads, and their algebras, can serve as tools for designing networks. Technically, a network model is a lax symmetric monoidal functor from the free symmetric monoidal category on some set to $\mathbf{Cat}$, and the construction of the corresponding operad proceeds via a symmetric monoidal version of the Grothendieck construction., Comment: 46 pages