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Michael Shulman

Publications and source records attributed to Michael Shulman.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2020

Modalities in homotopy type theory

Univalent homotopy type theory (HoTT) may be seen as a language for the category of $\infty$-groupoids. It is being developed as a new foundation for mathematics and as an internal language for (elementary) higher toposes. We develop the theory of factorization systems, reflective subuniverses, and modalities in homotopy type theory, including their construction using a "localization" higher inductive type. This produces in particular the ($n$-connected, $n$-truncated) factorization system as well as internal presentations of subtoposes, through lex modalities. We also develop the semantics of these constructions.

math.CT↗
arXiv2019

Constructing symmetric monoidal bicategories functorially

We present a method of constructing monoidal, braided monoidal, and symmetric monoidal bicategories from corresponding types of monoidal double categories that satisfy a lifting condition. Many important monoidal bicategories arise naturally in this way, and applying our general method is much easier than explicitly verifying the coherence laws of a monoidal bicategory for each example. Abstracting from earlier work in this direction, we express the construction as a functor between locally cubical bicategories that preserves monoid objects; this ensures that it also preserves monoidal functors, transformations, adjunctions, and so on. Examples include the monoidal bicategories of algebras and bimodules, categories and profunctors, sets and spans, open Markov processes, parametrized spectra, and various functors relating them.

math.CT↗
arXiv2019

All $(\infty,1)$-toposes have strict univalent universes

We prove the conjecture that any Grothendieck $(\infty,1)$-topos can be presented by a Quillen model category that interprets homotopy type theory with strict univalent universes. Thus, homotopy type theory can be used as a formal language for reasoning internally to $(\infty,1)$-toposes, just as higher-order logic is used for 1-toposes. As part of the proof, we give a new, more explicit, characterization of the fibrations in injective model structures on presheaf categories. In particular, we show that they generalize the coflexible algebras of 2-monad theory.

math.AT↗
arXiv2018

Comparing material and structural set theories

We study elementary theories of well-pointed toposes and pretoposes, regarded as category-theoretic or "structural" set theories in the spirit of Lawvere's "Elementary Theory of the Category of Sets". We consider weak intuitionistic and predicative theories of pretoposes, and we also propose category-theoretic versions of stronger axioms such as unbounded separation, replacement, and collection. Finally, we compare all of these theories formally to traditional membership-based or "material" set theories, using a version of the classical construction based on internal well-founded relations.

math.LO↗
arXiv2018

Contravariance through enrichment

We define strict and weak duality involutions on 2-categories, and prove a coherence theorem that every bicategory with a weak duality involution is biequivalent to a 2-category with a strict duality involution. For this purpose we introduce "2-categories with contravariance", a sort of enhanced 2-category with a basic notion of "contravariant morphism", which can be regarded either as generalized multicategories or as enriched categories. This enables a universal characterization of duality involutions using absolute weighted colimits, leading to a conceptual proof of the coherence theorem.

math.CT↗
arXiv2017

The linearity of fixed point invariants

We prove two general decomposition theorems for fixed-point invariants: one for the Lefschetz number and one for the Reidemeister trace. These theorems imply the familiar additivity results for these invariants. Moreover, the proofs of these theorems are essentially formal, taking place in the abstract context of bicategorical traces. This makes it straightforward to generalize the theory to analogous invariants in other contexts, such as equivariant and fiberwise homotopy theory.

math.AT↗
arXiv2017

Parametricity, automorphisms of the universe, and excluded middle

It is known that one can construct non-parametric functions by assuming classical axioms. Our work is a converse to that: we prove classical axioms in dependent type theory assuming specific instances of non-parametricity. We also address the interaction between classical axioms and the existence of automorphisms of a type universe. We work over intensional Martin-Löf dependent type theory, and in some results assume further principles including function extensionality, propositional extensionality, propositional truncation, and the univalence axiom.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2017

Brouwer's fixed-point theorem in real-cohesive homotopy type theory

We combine Homotopy Type Theory with axiomatic cohesion, expressing the latter internally with a version of "adjoint logic" in which the discretization and codiscretization modalities are characterized using a judgmental formalism of "crisp variables". This yields type theories that we call "spatial" and "cohesive", in which the types can be viewed as having independent topological and homotopical structure. These type theories can then be used to study formally the process by which topology gives rise to homotopy theory (the "fundamental $\infty$-groupoid" or "shape"), disentangling the "identifications" of Homotopy Type Theory from the "continuous paths" of topology. In a further refinement called "real-cohesion", the shape is determined by continuous maps from the real numbers, as in classical algebraic topology. This enables us to reproduce formally some of the classical applications of homotopy theory to topology. As an example, we prove Brouwer's fixed-point theorem.

math.CT↗
arXiv2017

Univalence for inverse EI diagrams

We construct a new model category presenting the homotopy theory of presheaves on "inverse EI $(\infty,1)$-categories", which contains universe objects that satisfy Voevodsky's univalence axiom. In addition to diagrams on ordinary inverse categories, as considered in previous work of the author, this includes a new model for equivariant algebraic topology with a compact Lie group of equivariance. Thus, it offers the potential for applications of homotopy type theory to equivariant homotopy theory.

math.AT↗
arXiv2017

Homotopy type theory: the logic of space

This is an introduction to type theory, synthetic topology, and homotopy type theory from a category-theoretic and topological point of view, written as a chapter for the book "New Spaces for Mathematics and Physics" (ed. Gabriel Catren and Mathieu Anel).

math.CT↗
arXiv2016

Idempotents in intensional type theory

We study idempotents in intensional Martin-Löf type theory, and in particular the question of when and whether they split. We show that in the presence of propositional truncation and Voevodsky's univalence axiom, there exist idempotents that do not split; thus in plain MLTT not all idempotents can be proven to split. On the other hand, assuming only function extensionality, an idempotent can be split if and only if its witness of idempotency satisfies one extra coherence condition. Both proofs are inspired by parallel results of Lurie in higher category theory, showing that ideas from higher category theory and homotopy theory can have applications even in ordinary MLTT. Finally, we show that although the witness of idempotency can be recovered from a splitting, the one extra coherence condition cannot in general; and we construct "the type of fully coherent idempotents", by splitting an idempotent on the type of partially coherent ones. Our results have been formally verified in the proof assistant Coq.

math.LO↗
arXiv2015

Enriched categories as a free cocompletion

This paper has two objectives. The first is to develop the theory of bicategories enriched in a monoidal bicategory -- categorifying the classical theory of categories enriched in a monoidal category -- up to a description of the free cocompletion of an enriched bicategory under a class of weighted bicolimits. The second objective is to describe a universal property of the process assigning to a monoidal category V the equipment of V-enriched categories, functors, transformations, and modules; we do so by considering, more generally, the assignation sending an equipment C to the equipment of C-enriched categories, functors, transformations, and modules, and exhibiting this as the free cocompletion of a certain kind of enriched bicategory under a certain class of weighted bicolimits.

math.CT↗
arXiv2015

Reedy categories and their generalizations

We observe that the Reedy model structure on a diagram category can be constructed by iterating an operation of "bigluing" model structures along a pair of functors and a natural transformation. This yields a new explanation of the definition of Reedy categories: they are almost exactly those small categories for which the category of diagrams and its model structure can be constructed by iterated bigluing. It also gives a consistent way to produce generalizations of Reedy categories, including the generalized Reedy categories of Cisinski and Berger-Moerdijk and the enriched Reedy categories of Angeltveit, but also new versions such as a combined notion of "enriched generalized Reedy category".

math.AT↗
arXiv2015

Of Matters Condensed

The American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting of condensed matter physics has grown to nearly 10,000 participants, comprises 23 individual APS groups, and even warrants its own hashtag (#apsmarch). Here we analyze the text and data from March Meeting abstracts of the past nine years and discuss trends in condensed matter physics over this time period. We find that in comparison to atomic, molecular, and optical physics, condensed matter changes rapidly, and that condensed matter appears to be moving increasingly toward subject matter that is traditionally in materials science and engineering.

physics.soc-ph↗
arXiv2015

The univalence axiom for elegant Reedy presheaves

We show that Voevodsky's univalence axiom for intensional type theory is valid in categories of simplicial presheaves on elegant Reedy categories. In addition to diagrams on inverse categories, as considered in previous work of the author, this includes bisimplicial sets and $Θ_n$-spaces. This has potential applications to the study of homotopical models for higher categories.

math.AT↗
arXiv2014

Quantum Gauge Field Theory in Cohesive Homotopy Type Theory

We implement in the formal language of homotopy type theory a new set of axioms called cohesion. Then we indicate how the resulting cohesive homotopy type theory naturally serves as a formal foundation for central concepts in quantum gauge field theory. This is a brief survey of work by the authors developed in detail elsewhere.

math-ph↗
arXiv2014

The linearity of traces in monoidal categories and bicategories

We show that in any symmetric monoidal category, if a weight for colimits is absolute, then the resulting colimit of any diagram of dualizable objects is again dualizable. Moreover, in this case, if an endomorphism of the colimit is induced by an endomorphism of the diagram, then its trace can be calculated as a linear combination of traces on the objects in the diagram. The formal nature of this result makes it easy to generalize to traces in homotopical contexts (using derivators) and traces in bicategories. These generalizations include the familiar additivity of the Euler characteristic and Lefschetz number along cofiber sequences, as well as an analogous result for the Reidemeister trace, but also the orbit-counting theorem for sets with a group action, and a general formula for homotopy colimits over EI-categories.

math.CT↗