Isbell conjugacy (a.k.a. Isbell duality or Isbell adjunction) (named after John R. Isbell [1] [2] ) is a fundamental construction of enriched category theory formally introduced by William Lawvere in 1986. [3] [4] That is a duality between covariant and contravariant representable presheaves associated with an objects of categories under the Yoneda embedding. [5] [6] In addition, Lawvere [7] is states as follows; "Then the conjugacies are the first step toward expressing the duality between space and quantity fundamental to mathematics". [8]
The (covariant) Yoneda embedding is a covariant functor from a small category into the category of presheaves on , taking to the contravariant representable functor: [1] [9] [10] [11]
and the co-Yoneda embedding [1] [12] [9] [13] (a.k.a. contravariant Yoneda embedding [14] [note 1] or the dual Yoneda embedding [21] ) is a contravariant functor from a small category into the opposite of the category of co-presheaves on , taking to the covariant representable functor:
Every functor has an Isbell conjugate of a functor [1] , given by
In contrast, every functor has an Isbell conjugate of a functor [1] given by
These two functors are not typically inverses, or even natural isomorphisms. Isbell duality asserts that the relationship between these two functors is an adjunction. [1]
Isbell duality is the relationship between Yoneda embedding and co-Yoneda embedding;
Let be a symmetric monoidal closed category, and let be a small category enriched in .
The Isbell duality is an adjunction between the functor categories; . [1] [3] [12] [26] [27] [28]
The functors of Isbell duality are such that and . [26] [29] [note 2]