Spectra associated to symmetric monoidal bicategories

We show how to construct a Gamma-bicategory from a symmetric monoidal bicategory, and use that to show that the classifying space is an infinite loop space upon group completion. We also show a way to relate this construction to the classic Gamma-category construction for a bipermutative category. As an example, we use this machinery to construct a delooping of the K-theory of a bimonoidal category as defined by Baas-Dundas-Rognes.

Explicit Formulas for 2-Characters

Ganter and Kapranov associated a 2-character to 2-representations of a finite group. Elgueta classified 2-representations in the category of 2-vector spaces 2Vect_k in terms of cohomological data. We give an explicit formula for the 2-character in terms of this cohomological data and derive some consequences.