Meromorphic tensor categories

We introduce the notion of meromorphic tensor category and illustrate it in several examples. They include representations of quantum affine algebras, chiral algebras of Beilinson and Drinfeld, G-vertex algebras of Borcherds, and representations of GL over a local field. Hopefully the formalism will accomodate various tensor structures arising in relation to the quantized Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equations and deformed CFT