Implications of large-cardinal principles in homotopical localization (Q2570069)

A homotopy idempotent functor is a functor \(E: Spaces \rightarrow Spaces\) which preserves weak equivalences and which is equipped with a natural transformation \(\eta: {\text{Id}}\rightarrow Spaces\) such that both \(\eta E\) and \(E\eta\) are weak equivalences \(EX\simeq EEX\) for all \(X\in Spaces\). Postnikov sections, Quillen plus construction, Bousfield homological localizations are all examples of homotopy idempotent functors. Let \(f: A\rightarrow B\) be a map. A space \(Z\) is called \(f\)-local if the map of function complexes \(f^{\ast}: {\text{map}}(B, Z)\rightarrow {\text{map}}(A, Z)\) is a weak equivalence. For any map \(f\) one can construct a homotopy idempotent functor \(L_{f}\) which is characterized by the property that \(L_{f}(X)\) is an \(f\)-local space for all \(X\) and that the map \(\eta: X\rightarrow L_{f}(X)\) is a homotopically universal map to \(f\)-local spaces. Such a functor is called the \(f\)-localization. As it turns out all known examples of homotopy idempotent functors are of the form \(L_{f}\) for some map \(f\). It is then natural to ask wheter all homotopy idempotent functors are \(f\)-localizations. The paper gives a surprising answer to this question: it is not possible to deduce this statement using ZFC axioms of set theory. To show this the authors construct a homotopy idempotent functor which, if it could be shown to be of the form \(L_{f}\), would imply existence of measurable cardinals. It is known though that the existence of measurable cardinals cannot be proved using ZFC axioms. On the other hand the authors show that if, in addition to ZFC, we assume Vopěnka's principle then one can prove that every homotopy idempotent functor is an \(f\)-localization. Therefore if it would be possible to show within ZFC that homotopy idempotent functors do not coincide with \(f\)-localizations we would obtain inconsistency of Vopěnka's principle with ZFC.