Premonoidal and Kleisli double categories
Bojana Femić
TL;DR
The paper develops a robust double-categorical framework for prem—onoidal structures by introducing binoidal double categories, a funny product, and funny multicategories, thereby lifting the theory of premonoidal bicategories to the double-category setting. It establishes a deep correspondence: a premonoidal double category is purely central if and only if its binoidal structure is induced by a pseudodouble quasi-functor, and such structures admit a monoidal interpretation via a functorial inner-hom. The work also develops centers (pure and full) within this framework and shows how monoidality of the pure center extends monoidal structures to centers and to the underlying horizontal bicategory, with implications for pure maps and Freyd-type constructions. In the second part, the authors study double monads and Kleisli double categories, showing how vertical strengths induce horizontal strengths and actions on Kleisli double categories, and that bistrong vertical double monads yield premonoidal Kleisli double categories, connecting semantic models for effectful languages to the double-categorical setting. Overall, the results provide a unifying, scalable approach to prem—onoidal, central, and Kleisli phenomena in double categories, with potential applications to semantic models of computation and higher-categorical semantics.
Abstract
We give a double categorical version of the recently introduced notion of premonoidal bicategories. We introduce a funny product and a funny type of multicategory on double categories granting them a closed funny monoidal structure. We investigate relations between various funny type of structures and premonoidal double categories. We prove that a premonoidal double category $\Dd$ is purely central if and only if its binoidal structure is given by a pseudodouble quasi-functor (a multimap for a Gray type of multicategory) if and only if it admits a monoidal structure. For such $\Dd$ we introduce pure center and show that the monoidal structure on $\Dd$ extends to it. We also discuss one-sided and general centers. Exploiting the companion-lifting properties of vertical structures in a double category into their horizontal counterparts, we prove a series of further results simplifying proofs for the corresponding bicategorical findings. We introduce vertical strengths on vertical double monads and horizontal strengths on horizontal double monads and prove that the former induce the latter. We show that vertical strengths induce actions of the induced horizontally monoidal double category on the corresponding Kleisli double category of the induced horizontal double monad. We prove that there is a 1-1 correspondence between horizontal strengths and extensions of the canonical action of the double category on itself. Finally, we show that for a bistrong vertical double monad the corresponding Kleisli double category is premonoidal.