In this mainly expository note, we state a criterion for when a left Kan extension of a lax monoidal functor along a strong monoidal functor can itself be equipped with a lax monoidal structure, in a way that results in a left Kan extension in MonCat. This belongs to the general theory of algebraic Kan extensions, as developed by Melli es-Tabareau, Koudenburg and Weber, and is very close to an instance of a theorem of Koudenburg. We find this special case particularly important due to its connections with the theory of graded monads.
Finally, we have also addressed a similar problem for the case of monoidal categories in Appendix B of @cite_3 . Our Theorem B.1 in there is similar to the present Theorem , but with different assumptions: the result in @cite_3 requires @math already to carry a lax monoidal structure, while the assumptions on the left Kan extension @math were relaxed: the natural transformation @math only needed to be a vertical epimorphism, while we now require even @math to be a Kan extension as well.
@cite_3
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We define a monad on the category of complete metric spaces with short maps, which assigns to each space the space of Radon probability measures on it with finite first moment, equipped with the Kantorovich--Wasserstein distance. It is analogous to the Giry monad on the category of Polish spaces, and it extends a construction due to van Breugel for compact and for 1-bounded complete metric spaces. We prove that this Kantorovich monad arises from a colimit construction on finite powers, which formalizes the intuition that probability measures are limits of finite samples. The proof relies on a new criterion for when an ordinary left Kan extension of lax monoidal functors is a monoidal Kan extension. This colimit characterization allows for the development of integration theory and other things, such as the treatment of measures on spaces of measures, completely without measure theory. We also show that the category of algebras of the Kantorovich monad is equivalent to the category of closed convex subsets of Banach spaces with short affine maps as the morphisms.