The HoTT reals coincide with the Escard\'o-Simpson reals

Abstract

Escard\'o and Simpson defined a notion of interval object by a universal property in any category with binary products. The Homotopy Type Theory book defines a higher-inductive notion of reals, and suggests that the interval may satisfy this universal property. We show that this is indeed the case in the category of sets of any universe. We also show that the type of HoTT reals is the least Cauchy complete subset of the Dedekind reals containing the rationals.