In category theory, a branch of mathematics, a symmetric monoidal category is a monoidal category (i.e. a category in which a "tensor product" is defined) such that the tensor product is symmetric (i.e. is, in a certain strict sense, naturally isomorphic to for all objects and of the category). One of the prototypical examples of a symmetric monoidal category is the category of vector spaces over some fixed field k, using the ordinary tensor product of vector spaces.