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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.65

Demystifying Codensity Monads via Duality

Authors: Fabian Lenke, Nico Wittrock, Stefan Milius, and Henning Urbat

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 364, 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)

Abstract

Codensity monads provide a universal method to generate complex monads from simple functors. Recently, a wide range of important monads in logic, denotational semantics, and probabilistic computation, such as several incarnations of the ultrafilter monad, the Vietoris monad, and the Giry monad, have been presented as codensity monads, using complex arguments. We propose a unifying categorical approach to codensity presentations of monads, based on the idea of relating the presenting functor to a dense functor via a suitable duality between categories. We prove a general presentation result applying to every such situation and demonstrate that most codensity presentations known in the literature emerge from this strikingly simple duality-based setup, drastically alleviating the complexity of their proofs and in many cases completely reducing them to standard duality results. Additionally, we derive a number of novel codensity presentations using our framework, including the first non-trivial codensity presentations for the filter monads on sets and topological spaces, the lower Vietoris monad on topological spaces, and the expectation monad on sets.

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Fabian Lenke, Nico Wittrock, Stefan Milius, and Henning Urbat. Demystifying Codensity Monads via Duality. In 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 364, pp. 65:1-65:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{lenke_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2026.65,
  author =	{Lenke, Fabian and Wittrock, Nico and Milius, Stefan and Urbat, Henning},
  title =	{{Demystifying Codensity Monads via Duality}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)},
  pages =	{65:1--65:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-412-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{364},
  editor =	{Mahajan, Meena and Manea, Florin and McIver, Annabelle and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.65},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255549},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.65},
  annote =	{Keywords: Codensity, Monad, Duality}
}

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Demystifying Codensity Monads via Duality

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