We introduce a family of variational ansatz states for chains of anyons which
optimally exploits the structure of the anyonic Hilbert space. This ansatz is
the natural analog of the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz for
spin chains. In particular, it has the same interpretation as a coarse-graining
procedure and is expected to accurately describe critical systems with
algebraically decaying correlations. We numerically investigate the validity of
this ansatz using the anyonic golden chain and its relatives as a testbed. This
demonstrates the power of entanglement renormalization in a setting with
non-abelian exchange statistics, extending previous work on qudits, bosons and
fermions in two dimensions.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, v2: extended, updated to match published
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