An Introduction to Fusion Categories

Motivation for the study of fusion categories is twofold: Fusion categories arise in wide array of mathematical subjects, and provide the necessary input for some fascinating topological constructions. We will carefully define what fusion categories are, and give representation theoretic examples. Then, we will explain how fusion categories are inherently finite combinatorial objects. We proceed to construct an example that does not come from group theory. Time permitting, we will go some way towards introducing so-called modular tensor categories.