It is well known that interpolation properties of logics underlying specification formalisms play an important role in the study of structured specifications, they have also many other useful logical consequences. In this paper, we solve the interpolation problem for Grothendieck institutions which have recently emerged as an important mathematical structure underlying heterogenous multi-logic specification. Our main result can be used in the applications in several different ways. It can be used to establish interpolation properties for multi-logic Grothendieck institutions, but also to lift interpolation properties from unsorted logics to their many sorted variants. The importance of the latter resides in the fact that, unlike other structural properties of logics, many sorted interpolation is a non-trivial generalisation of unsorted interpolation. The concepts, results, and the applications discussed in this paper are illustrated with several examples from conventional logic and algebraic specification theory.

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Inclusion systems have been introduced in algebraic specification theory as a categorical structure supporting the development of a general abstract logic-independent approach to the algebra of specification (or programming) modules. Here we extend the concept of indexed categories and their Grothendieck flattenings to inclusion systems. An important practical significance of the resulting Grothendieck inclusion systems is that they allow the development of module algebras for multi-logic heterogeneous specification frameworks. At another level, we show that several inclusion systems in use in some syntactic (signatures, deductive theories) or semantic contexts (models) appear as Grothendieck inclusion systems too. We also study several general properties of Grothendieck inclusion systems.