We characterize the epimorphisms in homotopy type theory (HoTT) as the fiberwise acyclic maps and develop a type-theoretic treatment of acyclic maps and types in the context of synthetic homotopy theory as developed in univalent foundations. We present examples and applications in group theory, such as the acyclicity of the Higman group, through the identification of groups with 0-connected, pointed 1-types. Many of our results are formalized as part of the agda-unimath library.

Working in homotopy type theory, we introduce the notion of n-exactness for a short sequence $F\to E\to B$ of pointed types and show that any fiber sequence $F\hookrightarrow E \twoheadrightarrow B$ of arbitrary types induces a short sequence

that is n-exact at $\| E\|_{n-1}$. We explain how the indexing makes sense when interpreted in terms of n-groups, and we compare our definition to the existing definitions of an exact sequence of n-groups for $n=1,2$. As the main application, we obtain the long n-exact sequence of homotopy n-groups of a fiber sequence.

C-systems were defined by Cartmell as models of generalized algebraic theories. B-systems were defined by Voevodsky in his quest to formulate and prove an initiality conjecture for type theories. They play a crucial role in Voevodsky’s construction of a syntactic C-system from a term monad. In this work, we construct an equivalence between the category of C-systems and the category of B-systems, thus proving a conjecture by Voevodsky.

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.

Homotopy type theory may be seen as an internal language for the ∞-category of weak ∞-groupoids. Moreover, weak ∞-groupoids model the univalence axiom. Voevodsky proposes this (language for) weak ∞-groupoids as a new foundation for Mathematics called the univalent foundations. It includes the sets as weak ∞-groupoids with contractible connected components, and thereby it includes (much of) the traditional set theoretical foundations as a special case. We thus wonder whether those ‘discrete’ groupoids do in fact form a (predicative) topos. More generally, homotopy type theory is conjectured to be the internal language of ‘elementary’ of ∞-toposes. We prove that sets in homotopy type theory form a ΠW-pretopos. This is similar to the fact that the 0-truncation of an ∞-topos is a topos. We show that both a subobject classifier and a 0-object classifier are available for the type theoretical universe of sets. However, both of these are large and moreover the 0-object classifier for sets is a function between 1-types (i.e. groupoids) rather than between sets. Assuming an impredicative propositional resizing rule we may render the subobject classifier small and then we actually obtain a topos of sets.