We define a commutative monoid structure on the poset of left-exact localizations of a higher topos, that we call the acyclic product. Our approach is anchored in a structural analogy between the poset of left-exact localizations of a topos and the poset of ideals of a commutative ring. The acyclic product is analogous to the product of ideals. The sequence of powers of a given left-exact localization defines a tower of localizations. We show how this recovers the towers of Goodwillie calculus in the unstable homotopical setting. We use this to describe the topoi of n-excisive functors as classifying n-nilpotent objects.
We put Goodwillie's calculus of functors and Weiss' orthogonal calculus in a unified framework. We do so in two ways. On the one hand, the relevant categories are all symmetric monoidal and controlled by their compact objects. We introduce the notion of tidy map as a means to generate symmetric monoidal localizations in this setting. These localizations are always left exact. Then we show that both the Goodwillie and Weiss towers are generated by such maps. On the other hand, the relevant categories are also topoi, for which there is a general theory of completion towers of left exact localizations. We had shown in a previous work that the Goodwillie tower is an instance a such a tower. We show here that the Weiss tower is a completion tower as well, and therefore that the general theory applies to orthogonal calculus.
We revisit the work of Toen-Vezzosi and Lurie on Grothendieck topologies, using the new tools of acyclic classes and congruences. We introduce a notion of extended Grothendieck topology on any 8-topos, and prove that the poset of extended Grothendieck topologies is isomorphic to that of topological localizations, hypercomplete localizations, Lawvere-Tierney topologies, and covering topologies (a variation on the notion of pretopology). It follows that these posets are small and have the structure of a frame. We revisit also the topological-cotopological factorization by introducing the notion of a cotopological morphism. And we revisit the notions of hypercompletion, hyperdescent, hypercoverings and hypersheaves associated to an extended Grothendieck topology. We also introduce the notion of forcing, which is a tool to compute with localizations of 8-topoi. We use this in particular to show that the topological part of a left-exact localization of an 8-topos is universally forcing the generators of this localization to be 8-connected instead of inverting them.
We present the first definition of strictly associative and unital ∞-category. Our proposal takes the form of a type theory whose terms describe the operations of such structures, and whose definitional equality relation enforces desired strictness conditions. The key technical device is a new computation rule in the definitional equality of the theory, which we call insertion, defined in terms of a universal property. On terms for which it is defined, this operation "inserts" one of the arguments of a substituted coherence into the coherence itself, appropriately modifying the pasting diagram and result type, and simplifying the syntax in the process. We generate an equational theory from this reduction relation and we study its properties in detail, showing that it yields a decision procedure for equality. Expressed as a type theory, our model is well-adapted for generating and verifying efficient proofs of higher categorical statements. We illustrate this via an OCaml implementation, and give a number of examples, including a short encoding of the syllepsis, a 5-dimensional homotopy that plays an important role in the homotopy groups of spheres.
We give a new description of computads for weak globular ω-categories by giving an explicit inductive definition of the free words. This yields a new understanding of computads, and allows a new definition of ω-category that avoids the technology of globular operads. Our framework permits direct proofs of important results via structural induction, and we use this to give new proofs that every ω-category is equivalent to a free one, and that the category of computads with variable-to-variable maps is a presheaf topos, giving a direct description of the index category. We prove that our resulting definition of ω-category agrees with that of Batanin and Leinster and that the induced notion of cofibrant replacement for ω-categories coincides with that of Garner.
We present the first definition of strictly associative and unital $\infty$-category. Our proposal takes the form of a generalized algebraic theory, with operations that give the composition and coherence laws, and equations encoding the strict associative and unital structure. The key technical idea of the paper is an equality generator called insertion, which can ``insert'' an argument context into the head context, simplifying the syntax of a term. The equational theory is defined by a reduction relation, and we study its properties in detail, showing that it yields a decision procedure for equality. Expressed as a type theory, our model is well-adapted for generating and verifying efficient proofs of higher categorical statements. We illustrate this via an OCaml implementation, and give a number of examples, including a short encoding of the syllepsis, a 5-dimensional homotopy that plays an important role in the homotopy groups of spheres.
We are developing tools for working with arbitrary left-exact localizations of ∞-topoi. We introduce a notion of higher sheaf with respect to an arbitrary set of maps Σ in an ∞-topos E. We show that the full subcategory of higher sheaves Sh(E,Σ) is an ∞-topos, and that the sheaf reflection E→Sh(E,Σ) is the left-exact localization generated by Σ. The proof depends on the notion of congruence, which is a substitute for the notion of Grothendieck topology in 1-topos theory.
Many definitions of weak and strict $\infty$-categories have been proposed. In this paper we present a definition for $\infty$-categories with strict associators, but which is otherwise fully weak. Our approach is based on the existing type theory Catt, whose models are known to correspond to weak $\infty$-categories. We add a definitional equality relation to this theory which identifies terms with the same associativity structure, yielding a new type theory Catt$_{sa}$, for strictly associative $\infty$-categories. We also provide a reduction relation which generates definitional equality, and show it is confluent and terminating, giving an algorithm for deciding equality of terms, and making typechecking decidable. Our key contribution, on which our reduction is based, is an operation on terms which we call insertion. This has a direct geometrical interpretation, allowing a subterm to be inserted into the head of the term, flatting its syntactic structure. We describe this operation combinatorially in terms of pasting diagrams, and also show can be characterized as a pushout of contexts. This allows reasoning about insertion using just its universal property.
Polynomial functors are a categorical generalization of the usual notion of polynomial, which has found many applications in higher categories and type theory: those are generated by polynomials consisting a set of monomials built from sets of variables.They can be organized into a cartesian bicategory, which unfortunately fails to be closed for essentially two reasons, which we address here by suitably modifying the model.Firstly, a naive closure is too large to be well-defined, which can be overcome by restricting to polynomials which are finitary.Secondly, the resulting putative closure fails to properly take the 2-categorical structure in account.We advocate here that this can be addressed by considering polynomials in groupoids, instead of sets.For those, the constructions involved into composition have to be performed up to homotopy, which is conveniently handled in the setting of homotopy type theory: we use it here to formally perform the constructions required to build our cartesian bicategory, in Agda.Notably, this requires us introducing an axiomatization in a small universe of the type of finite types, as an appropriate higher inductive type of natural numbers and bijections.
By extending type theory with a universe of definitionally associative and unital polynomial monads, we show how to arrive at a definition of opetopic type which is able to encode a number of fully coherent algebraic structures. In particular, our approach leads to a definition of ∞-groupoid internal to type theory and we prove that the type of such ∞-groupoids is equivalent to the universe of types. That is, every type admits the structure of an ∞-groupoid internally, and this structure is unique.
We propose a definition of higher sheaf with respect to an arbitrary set of maps $\Sigma$ in an $\infty$-topos $\mathcal{E}$. We then show that the associated reflection $\mathcal{E} \to {\rm Sh}(\mathcal{E},\Sigma)$ is left-exact so that the subcategory of sheaves with respect to $\Sigma$ is itself an $\infty$-topos. Furthermore, we show that the reflection $\mathcal{E} \to {\rm Sh}(\mathcal{E},\Sigma)$ may be characterized as the left-exact localization generated by $\Sigma$. In the course of the proof, we study the interaction of various types of factorization systems, and make essential use of the notion of a \emph{modality}, that is, a factorization system whose left class is stable by base change.
We extend Homotopy Type Theory with a novel modality that is simultaneously a monad and a comonad. Because this modality induces a non-trivial endomap on every type, it requires a more intricate judgemental structure than previous modal extensions of Homotopy Type Theory. We use this theory to develop an synthetic approach to spectra, where spectra are represented by certain types, and constructions on them by type structure: maps of spectra by ordinary functions, loop spaces by the identity type, and so on. We augment the type theory with a pair of axioms, one which implies that the spectra are stable, and the other which relates synthetic spectra to the ordinary definition of spectra in type theory as Ω-spectra. Finally, we show that the type theory is sound and complete for an abstract categorical semantics, in terms of a category-with-families with a weak endomorphism whose functor on contexts is a bireflection, i.e. has a counit an a unit that are a section-retraction pair.
We study the dependent type theory CaTT, introduced by Finster and Mimram, which presents the theory of weak $\omega$-categories, following the idea that type theories can be considered as presentations of generalized algebraic theories. Our main contribution is a formal proof that the models of this type theory correspond precisely to weak $\omega$-categories, as defined by Maltsiniotis, by generalizing a definition proposed by Grothendieck for weak $\omega$-groupoids: Those are defined as suitable presheaves over a cat-coherator, which is a category encoding structure expected to be found in an $\omega$-category. This comparison is established by proving the initiality conjecture for the type theory CaTT, in a way which suggests the possible generalization to a nerve theorem for a certain class of dependent type theories
We use type-theoretic techniques to present an algebraic theory of ∞-categories with strict units. Starting with a known type-theoretic presentation of fully weak ∞-categories, in which terms denote valid operations, we extend the theory with a non-trivial definitional equality. This forces some operations to coincide strictly in any model, yielding the strict unit behaviour. We make a detailed investigation of the meta-theoretic properties of this theory. We give a reduction relation that generates definitional equality, and prove that it is confluent and terminating, thus yielding the first decision procedure for equality in a strictly-unital setting. Moreover, we show that our definitional equality relation identifies all terms in a disc context, providing a point comparison with a previously proposed definition of strictly unital ∞-category. We also prove a conservativity result, showing that every operation of the strictly unital theory indeed arises from a valid operation in the fully weak theory. From this, we infer that strict unitality is a property of an ∞-category rather than additional structure.
We prove a generalization of the classical connectivity theorem of Blakers-Massey, valid in an arbitrary higher topos and with respect to an arbitrary modality, that is, a factorization system (L,R) in which the left class is stable by base change. We explain how to rederive the classical result, as well as the recent generalization of Chacholski, Scherer and Werndli (Ann. Inst. Fourier 66 (2016) 2641-2665). Our proof is inspired by the one given in homotopy-type theory in Favonia et al. (2016).
We develop an approach to Goodwillie's calculus of functors using the techniques of higher topos theory. Central to our method is the introduction of the notion of fiberwise orthogonality, a strengthening of ordinary orthogonality which allows us to give a number of useful characterizations of the class of n-excisive maps. We use these results to show that the pushout product of a P_n-equivalence with a P_m-equivalence is a P_m+n+1-equivalence. Then, building on our previous work, we prove a Blakers-Massey type theorem for the Goodwillie tower. We show how to use the resulting techniques to rederive some foundational theorems in the subject, such as delooping of homogeneous functors.
We introduce a dependent type theory whose models are weak ω-categories, generalizing Brunerie's definition of ω-groupoids. Our type theory is based on the definition of ω-categories given by Maltsiniotis, himself inspired by Grothendieck's approach to the definition of ω-groupoids. In this setup, ω-categories are defined as presheaves preserving globular colimits over a certain category, called a coherator. The coherator encodes all operations required to be present in an ω-category: both the compositions of pasting schemes as well as their coherences. Our main contribution is to provide a canonical type-theoretical characterization of pasting schemes as contexts which can be derived from inference rules. Finally, we present an implementation of a corresponding proof system.
This paper contributes to recent investigations of the use of homotopy type theory to give machine-checked proofs of constructions from homotopy theory. We present a mechanized proof of a result called the Blakers-Massey connectivity theorem, which relates the higher-dimensional loop structures of two spaces sharing a common part (represented by a pushout type, which is a generalization of a disjoint sum type) to those of the common part itself. This theorem gives important information about the pushout type, and has a number of useful corollaries, including the Freudenthal suspension theorem, which was used in previous formalizations. The proof is more direct than existing ones that apply in general category-theoretic settings for homotopy theory, and its mechanization is concise and high-level, due to novel combinations of ideas from homotopy theory and from type theory.
Homotopy type theory is an extension of Martin-Löf type theory with principles inspired by category theory and homotopy theory. With these extensions, type theory can be used to construct proofs of homotopy-theoretic theorems, in a way that is very amenable to computer-checked proofs in proof assistants such as Coq and Agda. In this paper, we give a computer-checked construction of Eilenberg-MacLane spaces. For an abelian group G, an Eilenberg-MacLane space K(G,n) is a space (type) whose nth homotopy group is G, and whose homotopy groups are trivial otherwise. These spaces are a basic tool in algebraic topology; for example, they can be used to build spaces with specified homotopy groups, and to define the notion of cohomology with coefficients in G. Their construction in type theory is an illustrative example, which ties together many of the constructions and methods that have been used in homotopy type theory so far.