This issue of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science is Part I of a Special Issue dedicated to the emerging field of Homotopy Type Theory and Univalent Foundations.

Locally cartesian closed (lcc) categories are natural categorical models of extensional dependent type theory. This paper introduces the “gros” semantics in the category of lcc categories: Instead of constructing an interpretation in a given individual lcc category, we show that also the category of all lcc categories can be endowed with the structure of a model of dependent type theory. The original interpretation in an individual lcc category can then be recovered by slicing. As in the original interpretation, we face the issue of coherence: Categorical structure is usually preserved by functors only up to isomorphism, whereas syntactic substitution commutes strictly with all type-theoretic structures. Our solution involves a suitable presentation of the higher category of lcc categories as model category. To that end, we construct a model category of lcc sketches, from which we obtain by the formalism of algebraically (co)fibrant objects model categories of strict lcc categories and then algebraically cofibrant strict lcc categories. The latter is our model of dependent type theory.

A uniform approach to computing with infinite objects like real numbers, tuples of these, compacts sets and uniformly continuous maps is presented. In the work of Berger, it was shown how to extract certified algorithms working with the signed digit representation from constructive proofs. Berger and the present author generalised this approach to complete metric spaces and showed how to deal with compact sets. Here, we unify this work and lay the foundations for doing a similar thing for the much more comprehensive class of compact Hausdorff spaces occurring in applications. The approach is of the same computational power as Weihrauch’s Type-Two Theory of Effectivity.

We give two concrete examples of continuous valuations on dcpo’s to separate minimal valuations, point-continuous valuations, and continuous valuations:

1. (1) Let ${\mathcal J}$ be the Johnstone’s non-sober dcpo, and μ be the continuous valuation on ${\mathcal J}$ with μ(U)=1 for nonempty Scott opens U and μ(U)=0 for $U=\emptyset$. Then, μ is a point-continuous valuation on ${\mathcal J}$ that is not minimal.

2. (2) Lebesgue measure extends to a measure on the Sorgenfrey line $\mathbb{R}_\ell$. Its restriction to the open subsets of $\mathbb{R}_\ell$ is a continuous valuation λ. Then, its image valuation $\overline\lambda$ through the embedding of $\mathbb{R}_\ell$ into its Smyth powerdomain $\mathcal{Q}\mathbb{R}_\ell$ in the Scott topology is a continuous valuation that is not point-continuous.

We believe that our construction $\overline\lambda$ might be useful in giving counterexamples displaying the failure of the general Fubini-type equations on dcpo’s.

We consider three monads on $\mathsf{Top}$ , the category of topological spaces, which formalize topological aspects of probability and possibility in categorical terms. The first one is the Hoare hyperspace monad H, which assigns to every space its space of closed subsets equipped with the lower Vietoris topology. The second one is the monad V of continuous valuations, also known as the extended probabilistic powerdomain. We construct both monads in a unified way in terms of double dualization. This reveals a close analogy between them and allows us to prove that the operation of taking the support of a continuous valuation is a morphism of monads $V \to H$ . In particular, this implies that every H-algebra (topological complete semilattice) is also a V-algebra. We show that V can be restricted to a submonad of $\tau$ -smooth probability measures on $\mathsf{Top}$ . By composing these morphisms of monads, we obtain that taking the supports of $\tau$ -smooth probability measures is also a morphism of monads.

Given a monoidal category $\mathcal C$ with an object J, we construct a monoidal category $\mathcal C[{J^ \vee }]$ by freely adjoining a right dual ${J^ \vee }$ to J. We show that the canonical strong monoidal functor $\Omega :\mathcal C \to \mathcal C[{J^ \vee }]$ provides the unit for a biadjunction with the forgetful 2-functor from the 2-category of monoidal categories with a distinguished dual pair to the 2-category of monoidal categories with a distinguished object. We show that $\Omega :\mathcal C \to \mathcal C[{J^ \vee }]$ is fully faithful and provide coend formulas for homs of the form $\mathcal C[{J^ \vee }](U,\,\Omega A)$ and $\mathcal C[{J^ \vee }](\Omega A,U)$ for $A \in \mathcal C$ and $U \in \mathcal C[{J^ \vee }]$. If ${\rm{N}}$ denotes the free strict monoidal category on a single generating object 1, then ${\rm{N[}}{{\rm{1}}^ \vee }{\rm{]}}$ is the free monoidal category Dpr containing a dual pair – ˧ + of objects. As we have the monoidal pseudopushout $\mathcal C[{J^ \vee }] \simeq {\rm{Dpr}}{{\rm{ + }}_{\rm{N}}}\mathcal C$, it is of interest to have an explicit model of Dpr: we provide both geometric and combinatorial models. We show that the (algebraist’s) simplicial category Δ is a monoidal full subcategory of Dpr and explain the relationship with the free 2-category Adj containing an adjunction. We describe a generalization of Dpr which includes, for example, a combinatorial model Dseq for the free monoidal category containing a duality sequence X0 ˧ X1 ˧ X2 ˧ … of objects. Actually, Dpr is a monoidal full subcategory of Dseq.

Directed paths have been used by several authors to describe concurrent executions of a program. Spaces of directed paths in an appropriate state space contain executions with all possible legal schedulings. It is interesting to investigate whether one obtains different topological properties of such a space of executions if one restricts attention to schedulings with “nice” properties, e.g. involving synchronisations. This note shows that this is not the case, i.e. that one may operate with nice schedulings without inflicting any harm. Several of the results in this note had previously been obtained by Ziemiański in Ziemiański (2017. Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing28 497–525; 2020a. Journal of Applied and Computational Topology4 (1) 45–78). We attempt to make them accessible for a wider audience by giving an easier proof for these findings by an application of quite elementary results from algebraic topology; notably the nerve lemma.

My goal is to give an accessible introduction to Martin’s work on the groupoid model and how it is related to the recent notion of univalence in Homotopy Type Theory while sharing some memories of Martin.

In this paper, we define indexed type theories which are related to indexed (∞-)categories in the same way as (homotopy) type theories are related to (∞-)categories. We define several standard constructions for such theories including finite (co)limits, arbitrary (co)products, exponents, object classifiers, and orthogonal factorization systems. We also prove that these constructions are equivalent to their type theoretic counterparts such as Σ-types, unit types, identity types, finite higher inductive types, Π-types, univalent universes, and higher modalities.

Cubical methods have played an important role in the development of Homotopy Type Theory and Univalent Foundations (HoTT/UF) in recent years. The original motivation behind these developments was to give constructive meaning to Voevodsky’s univalence axiom, but they have since then led to a range of new results. Among the achievements of these methods is the design of new type theories and proof assistants with native support for notions from HoTT/UF, syntactic and semantic consistency results for HoTT/UF, as well as a variety of independence results and establishing that the univalence axiom does not increase the proof theoretic strength of type theory. This paper is based on lecture notes that were written for the 2019 Homotopy Type Theory Summer School at Carnegie Mellon University. The goal of these lectures was to give an introduction to cubical methods and provide sufficient background in order to make the current research in this very active area of HoTT/UF more accessible to newcomers. The focus of these notes is hence on both the syntactic and semantic aspects of these methods, in particular on cubical type theory and the various cubical set categories that give meaning to these theories.

The variety of quasi-Nelson algebras (QNAs) has been recently introduced and characterised in several equivalent ways: among others, as (1) the class of bounded commutative integral (but non-necessarily involutive) residuated lattices satisfying the Nelson identity, as well as (2) the class of (0, 1)-congruence orderable commutative integral residuated lattices. Logically, QNAs are the algebraic counterpart of quasi-Nelson logic, which is the (algebraisable) extension of the substructural logic ℱℒew (Full Lambek calculus with Exchange and Weakening) by the Nelson axiom. In the present paper, we collect virtually all the results that are currently known on QNAs, including solutions to certain questions left open in earlier publications. Furthermore, we extend our study to some subreducts of QNAs, that is, classes of algebras corresponding to fragments of the algebraic language obtained by eliding either the implication or the lattice operations.

Any modality in homotopy type theory gives rise to an orthogonal factorization system of which the left class is stable under pullbacks. We show that there is a second orthogonal factorization system associated with any modality, of which the left class is the class of ○-equivalences and the right class is the class of ○-étale maps. This factorization system is called the modal reflective factorization system of a modality, and we give a precise characterization of the orthogonal factorization systems that arise as the modal reflective factorization system of a modality. In the special case of the n-truncation, the modal reflective factorization system has a simple description: we show that the n-étale maps are the maps that are right orthogonal to the map $${\rm{1}} \to {\rm{ }}{{\rm{S}}^{n + 1}}$$ . We use the ○-étale maps to prove a modal descent theorem: a map with modal fibers into ○X is the same thing as a ○-étale map into a type X. We conclude with an application to real-cohesive homotopy type theory and remark how ○-étale maps relate to the formally etale maps from algebraic geometry.

Ordering is a well-established concept in mathematics and also plays an important role in many areas of computer science, where quasi-orderings, most notably well-founded quasi-orderings and well-quasi-orderings, are of particular interest. This paper deals with quasi-orderings on first-order terms and introduces a new notion of unification based on a special quasi-order, known as homeomorphic tree embedding. Historically, the development of unification theory began with the central notion of a most general unifier based on the subsumption order. A unifier $\sigma$ is most general, if it subsumes any other unifier $\tau$ , that is, if there is a substitution $\lambda$ with $\tau=_{E}\sigma\lambda$ , where E is an equational theory and $=_{E}$ denotes equality under E. Since there is in general more than one most general unifier for unification problems under equational theories E, called E-Unification, we have the notion of a complete and minimal set of unifiers under E for a unification problem $\varGamma$ , denoted as $\mu\mathcal{U}\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ . This set is still the basic notion in unification theory today. But, unfortunately, the subsumption quasi-order is not a well-founded quasi-order, which is the reason why for certain equational theories there are solvable E-unification problems, but the set $\mu\mathcal{U}\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ does not exist. They are called type nullary in the unification hierarchy. In order to overcome this problem and also to substantially reduce the number of most general unifiers, we extended the well-known encompassment order on terms to an encompassment order on substitutions (modulo E). Unification under the encompassment order is called essential unification and if $\mu\mathcal{U}\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ exists, then the complete set of essential unifiers $e\mathcal{U}\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ is a subset of $\mu\mathcal{U}\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ . An interesting effect is that many E-unification problems with an infinite set of most general unifiers (under the subsumption order) reduce to a problem with only finitely many essential unifiers. Moreover, there are cases of an equational theory E, for which the complete set of most general unifiers does not exist, the minimal and complete set of essential unifiers however does exist. Unfortunately again, the encompassment order is not a well-founded quasi-ordering either, that is, there are still theories with a solvable unification problem, for which a minimal and complete set of essential unifiers does not exist. This paper deals with a third approach, namely the extension of the well-known homeomorphic embedding of terms to a homeomorphic embedding of substitutions (modulo E). We examine the set of most general, minimal, and complete E-unifiers under the quasi-order of homeomorphic embedment modulo an equational theory E, called $\varphi U\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ , and propose an appropriate definitional framework based on the standard notions of unification theory extended by notions for the tree embedding theorem or Kruskal’s theorem as it is called. The main results are that for regular theories the minimal and complete set $\varphi\mathcal{U}\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ always exists. If we restrict the E-embedding order to pure E-embedding, a well-known technique in logic programming and term rewriting where the difference between variables is ignored, the set $\varphi_{\pi}\mathcal{U}\Sigma_{E}(\Gamma)$ always exists and it is even finite for any theory E.

Ehrhard et al. (2018. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, POPL 2, Article 59.) proposed a model of probabilistic functional programming in a category of normed positive cones and stable measurable cone maps, which can be seen as a coordinate-free generalization of probabilistic coherence spaces (PCSs). However, unlike the case of PCSs, it remained unclear if the model could be refined to a model of classical linear logic. In this work, we consider a somewhat similar category which gives indeed a coordinate-free model of full propositional linear logic with nondegenerate interpretation of additives and sound interpretation of exponentials. Objects are dual pairs of normed cones satisfying certain specific completeness properties, such as existence of norm-bounded monotone weak limits, and morphisms are bounded (adjointable) positive maps. Norms allow us a distinct interpretation of dual additive connectives as product and coproduct. Exponential connectives are modeled using real analytic functions and distributions that have representations as power series with positive coefficients. Unlike the familiar case of PCSs, there is no reference or need for a preferred basis; in this sense the model is invariant. PCSs form a full subcategory, whose objects, seen as posets, are lattices. Thus, we get a model fitting in the tradition of interpreting linear logic in a linear algebraic setting, which arguably is free from the drawbacks of its predecessors.

We give two geometry of interaction models for a typed λ-calculus with recursion endowed with operators for sampling from a continuous uniform distribution and soft conditioning, namely a paradigmatic calculus for higher-order Bayesian programming. The models are based on the category of measurable spaces and partial measurable functions, and the category of measurable spaces and s-finite kernels, respectively. The former is proved adequate with respect to both a distribution-based and a sampling-based operational semantics, while the latter is proved adequate with respect to a sampling-based operational semantics.