Induced representations and Mackey theory
Let \(G\) be a group. A linear representation of \(G\) is a pair \((\rho, V)\), where \(V\) is a finite dimensional vector space over \(\mathbb{C}\) and \(\rho: G \to GL(V)\) is a group homomorphism. Without ambiguity, we will call \(\rho\) a representation of \(G\). Let \((\rho_1, V_1)\) and \((\rho_2, V_2)\) be two representations of \(G\), an intertwining operator between them is a linear map \(T: V_1 \to V_2\) such that for any \(g \in G\), the following diagram commutes: \[\begin{equation}\label{eq:diagram} \require{AMScd}\begin{CD} V_1 @>T>> V_2 \\ @V{\rho_1(g)}VV @VV{\rho_2(g)}V \\ V_1 @>T>> V_2 \end{CD} \end{equation}\] Let \(\text{Hom}_G(\rho_1, \rho_2)\) be the space of all intertwining operators between \(\rho_1\) and \(\rho_2\).
Let \((\rho, V)\) be a representation of \(G\). Let \(H\) be a subgroup of \(G\), then we can restrict \(\rho\) to \(H\) to get a representation of \(H\). We will use \(\text{Res}^G_H \, \rho\) to denote the restricted representation of \(H\) from \(\rho\). Conversely, if \(\pi\) is a representation of \(H\), then we can construct a representation of \(G\) from \(\pi\), which is known as induced representation of \(G\) from \(\pi\), denoted as \(\text{Ind}_H^G \, \pi\). In this post, I will first talk about the precise description of induced representations and the relations between \(\text{Res}^G_H\) and \(\text{Ind}_H^G\). I will then discuss Mackey’s theorem, which dictates a further relation between restricted and induced representations.