# Origins of the name “Q” and “R” for cofibrant and fibrant replacement functors.

In a model category $\mathscr M$ (in the modern sense, i.e. closed and with functorial factorizations), there is a notion of fibrant and cofibrant replacement functors.

Specifically, for any object $x$ of $\mathscr M$, the $(\mathrm{Cofib}\cap W, \mathrm{Fib})$-factorization $$x \to x' \to 1 \qquad \text{(1 final object)}$$ gives rise to a fibrant replacement functor $R \colon \mathscr M \to \mathscr M$. Dually, the $(\mathrm{Cofib}, \mathrm{Fib}\cap W)$-factorization $$0 \to x'' \to x \qquad \text{(0 initial object)}$$ gives rise to a cofibrant replacement functor $Q \colon \mathscr M \to \mathscr M$.

I did not choose the letter $Q$ and $R$ randomly. They are all over the literature (Hovey, Goerss-Jardine, etc.). Why those letters? They hardly seem natural...

• I just checked Quillen's Homotopical Algebra, and he uses those letters already (proof of Theorem 1, p. 1.14). It surely explains why the other use those letter but still not the reason behind those meaningless(?) names... – Pece Jun 3 '14 at 13:58
• I don't think using $R$ for a $R$eplacement functor is completely random... And there had to be some choice made between $Q$ and $S$ I guess. – Najib Idrissi Jun 3 '14 at 14:05
• $Q$ slightly suggests "co" – Berci Jun 3 '14 at 21:36
• Well, there are canonical morphisms $Q(X) \to X$ and $X \to R(X)$, so Q is on the left and R is on the right, just like in the alphabet. – user314 Jun 4 '14 at 21:20
• Another thought: $R$ stands for reflection, because fibrant replacement can be thought of as the left adjoint to a certain fully faithful functor. (See proposition 4.4.5 in my notes.) – Zhen Lin Jun 12 '14 at 3:19

• Q is the letter just before R in the alphabet, and the cofibrant/fibrant replacements fit in a diagram like $Q_X \to X \to R_X$, in the same order as in the alphabet (see user314's comment). More generally one puts cofibrant objects in the left slot of the hom functor and fibrant object in the right slot. This remark can probably be used to explain the choice of the other letter as soon as one letter is chosen.
• The letter Q might stand for Quasi-functor. Quillen notes in the proof of Proposition 5 in Chapter II, Section 2 that $X \mapsto Q(X)$ and $X \mapsto R(X)$ define "quasi-functors".