Mathematically, the Fibonacci anyons are identified by the fact that they are described by the
Fibonacci category, a certain
modular tensor category. Due to its connections with
quantum field theory and its particularly simple structure, the Fibonacci category was among the first modular tensor categories to be considered. It was developed in the early 2000s by
Michael Freedman,
Zhenghan Wang, and
Michael Larsen in the context of
topological quantum computation via Fibonacci anyons. The set of simple objects of {\bf Fib} has size two, and is denoted \mathcal{L}=\{1,\tau\}. Its non-trivial fusion rule is given by \tau \otimes \tau = 1\oplus \tau. The other fusion rules are \tau \otimes 1 = 1 \otimes \tau = \tau and 1\otimes 1 =1. The twist values are \theta_1=1 and \theta_{\tau}=e^{4\pi i/5}. The R-symbols are R^{\tau,\tau}_{1}=e^{-4\pi i/5}, R^{\tau,\tau}_{\tau}=e^{3\pi i /5}, and R^{1,1}_1 =R^{1,\tau}_{\tau}=R^{\tau,1}_{\tau}=1. All non-zero F-symbols are all equal to 1, except for the symbols F^{\tau,\tau,\tau}_{\tau; 1,1}=\varphi^{-1}, F^{\tau,\tau,\tau}_{\tau; \tau, 1} = F^{\tau,\tau,\tau}_{\tau;1,\tau} = \varphi^{- 1/2}, and F^{\tau,\tau,\tau}_{\tau;\tau,\tau}=-\varphi^{- 1} where \varphi is the
golden ratio. == Algebraic properties ==