HOMOTOPY TYPE OF A 2-CATEGORY

The classical group completion theorem states that under a certain condition the homology of ${\Omega}BM$ is computed by inverting ${\pi}_0M$ in the homology of M. McDuff and Segal extended this theorem in terms of homology fibration. Recently, more general group completion theorem for simplicial spaces was developed. In this paper, we construct a symmetric monoidal 2-category ${\mathcal{A}}$. The 1-morphisms of ${\mathcal{A}}$ are generated by three atomic 2-dimensional CW-complexes and the set of 2-morphisms is given by the group of path components of the space of homotopy equivalences of 1-morphisms. The main part of the paper is to compute the homotopy type of the group completion of the classifying space of ${\mathcal{A}}$, which is shown to be homotopy equivalent to ${\mathbb{Z}}{\times}BAut^+_{\infty}$.