Condition that All Irreducible Representations of a Compact Lie Group, if Restricted to a Subgroup, Contain no Representation More than Once

Abstract

One of the results of the theory of the irreducible representations of the unitary group in n dimensions Un is that these representations, if restricted to the subgroup Un-1 leaving a vector (let us say the unit vector e1 along the first coordinate axis) invariant, do not contain any irreducible representation of this Un-1 more than once (see [1, Chapter X and Equation (10.21)]; the irreducible representations of the unitary group were first determined by I. Schur in his doctoral dissertation (Berlin, 1901)). Some time ago, a criterion for this situation was derived for finite groups [3] and the purpose of the present article is to prove the aforementioned result for compact Lie groups, and to apply it to the theory of the representations of Un.