This is an archived version pinned as of the submission of my master's thesis. An up-to-date version may be found online.

Hilbert's ε-operators

module foundation.hilberts-epsilon-operators where

open import foundation.functoriality-propositional-truncation
open import foundation.propositional-truncations
open import foundation.universe-levels

open import foundation-core.equivalences
open import foundation-core.function-types

Idea

Hilbert's $\epsilon$-operator at a type A is a map type-trunc-Prop A → A. Contrary to Hilbert, we will not assume that such an operator exists for each type A.

Definition

ε-operator-Hilbert : {l : Level} → UU l → UU l
ε-operator-Hilbert A = type-trunc-Prop A → A

Properties

The existence of Hilbert's ε-operators is invariant under equivalences

ε-operator-equiv :
  {l1 l2 : Level} {X : UU l1} {Y : UU l2} (e : X ≃ Y) →
  ε-operator-Hilbert X → ε-operator-Hilbert Y
ε-operator-equiv e f =
  (map-equiv e ∘ f) ∘ (map-trunc-Prop (map-inv-equiv e))

ε-operator-equiv' :
  {l1 l2 : Level} {X : UU l1} {Y : UU l2} (e : X ≃ Y) →
  ε-operator-Hilbert Y → ε-operator-Hilbert X
ε-operator-equiv' e f =
  (map-inv-equiv e ∘ f) ∘ (map-trunc-Prop (map-equiv e))