Contents

# Contents

## Idea

Cubical type theory is a version of homotopy type theory in which univalence is not just an axiom but a theorem, hence, since this is constructive, has “computational content”. Cubical type theory models the infinity-groupoid-structure implied by Martin-Löf identity types on constructive cubical sets, whence the name.

The first constructive account of the univalence axiom was given in (Coquand 13, Bezem-Coquand-Huber 17), called the “BCH-model”.

The BCH model, unfortunately, has some problems that appear to make it unsuitable for general HoTT. In particular, it is not known how to model higher inductive types. The problem is that the BCH model is based on presheaves on the ‘symmetric monoidal cube category’, which is basically the free PROP generated by an interval. In particular, the base category’s maps are generated by face maps and permutative renamings of dimension variables (this is where the ‘symmetric monoidal’ part comes in). For somewhat technical reasons, this doesn’t work out when you want to define the elimination rules for higher inductive types (like for the circle).

To account for HITs, you seem to need diagonals in the base category. There is more than one choice in addition as to what other morphisms to add.

Both models validate univalence (like the BCH model) and can be used to model a variety of HITs as well as supporting a syntactic type theory based on ‘dimension variables’. However, while it is possible to interpret the Martin-Löf identity type in all of these models, it is only equivalent to, not definitionally isomorphic to, the native cubical path-types in the model. Thus, the latter support the Martin-Lof eliminator, but only with a typal computation rule.

## Models

Cubical type theory can be modeled in a number of varieties of cubical sets, for example in a type-theoretic model structure.

## References

Introductory lecture notes:

Exposition in view of synthetic homotopy theory:

• Anders Mörtberg, Loïc Pujet, Cubical synthetic homotopy theory, CPP 2020: Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Certified Programs and Proofs January 2020, pp. 158–171, doi:10.1145/3372885.3373825, (pdf)

Original articles on the BCH model:

On the CCHM model and type theory:

On the cartesian cubical model and type theory:

On comparing the models:

Discussion of implementation in the proof assistant Cubical Agda:

On normalization for cubical type theory:

Last revised on June 20, 2022 at 18:00:41. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.