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General results about set quotients - #1312

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mortberg merged 2 commits into
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cangiuli:master
Jun 12, 2026
Merged

General results about set quotients#1312
mortberg merged 2 commits into
agda:masterfrom
cangiuli:master

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@cangiuli

@cangiuli cangiuli commented Jun 5, 2026

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This PR adds several general-purpose lemmas about set quotients:

  • HoTT Book Lemma 6.10.8: If we have a function r sending each element of A to its "canonical representative" under the relation R, then the set of fixed points of r (i.e., the set of canonical representatives) satisfies the universal property of the quotient A/R and is equivalent to it.
  • (added in 14019af) If p : A -> B is a surjection into a set, then B is the quotient of A by x ~ y := p x = p y.
  • HoTT Book Corollary 6.10.10: If p : A -> B is a retraction into a set, then B is the quotient of A by x ~ y := p x = p y.
  • Every set A is equivalent to A / _≡_.

If you can think of any better names for these results, please let me know. :)

@anshwad10

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About quotRetractEquiv: Doesn't it suffice for p to be a surjection, not necessarily a retraction?

@cangiuli

cangiuli commented Jun 8, 2026

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@anshwad10 Yes, good point!

I'll note that the statement I formalized is already stronger than what's in the HoTT Book in that it doesn't require isSet A, since it doesn't go through equivQuotCR (Lemma 6.10.8). (Actually, I tried going through that result, but the proof was quite a bit longer than the current "direct" one, because a bunch of the details are fiddly.)

I'm not sure whether I should actually add the even stronger statement that isSurjection p suffices to this PR, because the proof is more complicated (since we need to fiddle with truncations) and I don't have a use case in mind at the moment...

@mortberg mortberg left a comment

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Good stuff! I would be happy to merge as is and you can add the suggested result in a future PR, or you can do it now. Let me know what you want me to do

Comment thread Cubical/HITs/SetQuotients/Properties.agda
@cangiuli

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OK, I found an even cleaner way to prove the more general result that @anshwad10 suggested (when p is a surjection), and I now derive the previous result (when p is a retraction) from it. I'm happy for you to merge this as soon as you approve.

@mortberg

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Very nice!

@mortberg
mortberg merged commit 7b9019b into agda:master Jun 12, 2026
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3 participants