Some fundamental algebraic tools for the semantics of computation. III: Indexed categories (Q1183597)

From the authors' abstract and introduction: ``For each many-sorted algebraic signature \(\Sigma\), there is a category \(\text{Alg}(\Sigma)\) of \(\Sigma\)-algebras, and a signature morphism \(\sigma: \Sigma\to\Sigma'\) induces a functor \(\text{Alg}(\sigma): \text{Alg}(\Sigma')\to\text{Alg}(\Sigma)\), which we call a \(\sigma\)- reduct. Thus, there is a functor \(\text{Alg}: \text{Alg\;Sig}^{op}\to\text{Cat}\) from the (index) category of signatures to the category of categories.'' The authors therefore study ``strict'' indexed categories which appear to be ``a useful tool for the working computer scientist. An indexed category gives rise to a single flattened category as a disjoint union of its component categories plus some additional morphisms. Similarly, an indexed functor (which is a uniform family of functors between the components categories) induces a flattened functor between the corresponding flattened categories. Under certain assumptions, flattened categories are (co)complete if all their components are, and flattened functors have left adjoints if all their components do.'' [The present Part III is entirely independent of Parts I and II (to appear)].