Operads of wiring diagrams (Q1785572)

These lecture notes deal with wiring diagrams and their operadic structure. A wiring diagram consists of inputs, outputs, ``delay nodes'', several boxes with their own inputs and outputs, and wires that connect all of these. There is a natural operadic structure on wiring diagrams: given two wiring diagrams and a choice of box in the first diagram, if the inputs/outputs of the box match with those of the second diagram, then one can ``insert'' the second diagram in the first diagram in the stead of the box. Informally, such a wiring diagram models a process with several abstract inputs and outputs (e.g. raw material and finished products), each box is a subprocess, and each wire is a dependency link. The operadic structure corresponds to expliciting a subprocess in terms of smaller subprocesses. According to the preface, ``these objects have enormous potential for applications in many different disciplines, including computer science, cognitive neuroscience, dynamical systems, network theory, and circuit diagrams''. Several variants of wiring diagrams are presented: wiring diagrams \(\mathsf{WD}\) as above; normal wiring diagrams \(\mathsf{WD}_\bullet\) with no delay nodes; strict wiring diagrams \(\mathsf{WD}_0\) where wires cannot split or merge; and undirected wiring diagrams \(\mathsf{UWD}\) where inputs and outputs are not distinguished. Part I is devoted to the description of a finite presentation of the three colored operads \(\mathsf{WD}\), \(\mathsf{WD}_\bullet\), and \(\mathsf{WD}_0\). The author moreover gives examples of finitely presented algebras over these operads from the literature: the ``propagator algebra'' over \(\mathsf{WD}\), the ``algebra of discrete systems'' over \(\mathsf{WD}_\bullet\), and the ``algebra of open dynamical systems'' over \(\mathsf{WD}_0\). Part II consists of the description of a finite presentation of the operad of undirected wiring diagrams \(\mathsf{UWD}\), the description of a certain \(\mathsf{UWD}\)-algebra, the ``relational algebra'', and a partial proof of a conjecture of Spivak regarding this algebra. Finally, Part III is about maps between these four operads, which translate to functors between the corresponding categories of algebra. The author precisely describes the images of the functors from directed to undirected diagrams. Throughout the books, illustrations help in visualizing the mathematical content of the definitions and theorems.