What is Homotopy Type Theory Good For?

Posted by Urs Schreiber

The current situation of homotopy type theory reminds me a bit of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the millenium.

Back then a technology had appeared which was as powerful as it was new: while everybody had a sure feeling that the technology would have dramatically valuable impact, because it was so new nobody had an actual idea of what that would be. As opposed to other bubbles, that one did not burst because overly optimistic hopes had been unjustifed as such, but because it took a while to understand just how these hopes would be materialized in detail (for instance that today I would send a message as this here from a café via my webbook from my dropbox account).

With homotopy type theory the situation currently seems to be similar to me. On the one hand it is clear that some dramatic breakthrough right at the heart of mathematics has occured. One hears the sound of something big happening. But: what is the impact? It feels like after 1995 – when it was clear that the internet is going to be something big – but still before, say, 2003, when we started getting a good idea of how it changes our lives.

How will homotopy type theory change our lives?

Currently most research in homotopy type theory revolves around the fine-tuning of the formulation itself and completing the understanding of its relation to traditional homotopy theory. That’s necessary and good. (It’s great, I am enthusiastic about it!) But if the excitement about HoTT is not to be an illusion, then something will follow after that. The traditional homotopy theorist currently may complain (and some do) that much of what is happening is that facts already known are being re-formulated in a new language, not always yet to an effect a homotopy theorist would find noteworthy.

So I am wondering: how will the traditional homotopy theorist eventually benefit from homotopy type theory? How the researcher who uses homotopy theory for something else?

I am asking for personal reasons, too. Since, somewhat inadvertently, I have been investing some of my time into learning about it, I am naturally wondering: how will that time investment pay off for me? What does homotopy type theory do for my research?

I am not sure yet. But I have some first ideas. One of these I want to share here.

An example

My research, you may have noticed, is motivated from understanding basic structural phenomena in theoretical physics as incarnations of natural mathematical structures. What I will try to indicate in the following is a certain kind of problem that poses itself in the context of string theory, which – I think it is fair to say – was generally regarded to be among the more subtle problems in a field rich in subtle mathematical effects, and how it finds an elegant and simple solution once you regard it from the perspective of homotopy type theory.

What I say in the following I have said in different words before, together with my coauthors Domenico Fiorenza and Hisham Sati: in section 2 of an article titled The E8-moduli 3-stack of the C-field in M-theory. There we point out that the solution which we propose and study in the article, to some problem in string theory, can naturally be understood simply by reformulating a well-known equation – known as the flux quantization condition – first as a fiber product of sets of certain field configurations and then refining that to a homotopy fiber product of moduli ∞-stacks of certain field configurations.

Here I will just observe that if you come to this from homotopy type theory, then the solution looks even more elegant than this: one arrives there simply by taking verbatim the symbols denoting the solution set to the equation, but now interpreting these not in the ordinary logic of sets, but in the homotopy logic of homotopy types. It is then homotopy type theory which automatically produces the correct answer, the “ E 8 E_8 -moduli 3-stack of the supergravity C-field in M-theory”. A solution that looks subtle to the eye of classical logic becomes self-evident from the point of view of homotopy logic / homotopy type theory.

From these remarks everybody with just basic training in category theory and homotopy theory can already deduce what I will say below. And what I say next is not hard to see, once you see it. It is one of those cases where a simple change of perspective leads with great ease to a solution of what seemed to be a difficult technical problem. Nevertheless, or because of this, I thought I’d say this explicitly.

Posted at May 10, 2012 12:33 AM UTC