The tricategory of formal composites and its strictification

Abstract

The results of this thesis allows one to replace calculations in tricategories with equivalent calculations in Gray categories (aka semistrict tricategories). In particular the rewriting calculus for Gray categories as used for example by the online proof assistant globular (arXiv:1612.01093), or equivalently the Gray-diagrams of arXiv:1211.0529 can then be used also in the case of a fully weak tricategory.