 Frobenius–Schur indicator

For an irreducible complex character of a representation, the indicator is $1$ for real type, $-1$ for quaternionic type and $0$ for complex type, the latter meaning $\chi \ne \overline{\chi }$. It detects the invariant bilinear form on an irreducible representation. For an odd-order group, squaring permutes its elements, so every nontrivial irreducible character has indicator zero by character orthogonality.

The Frobenius–Schur indicator is a concept from representation theory, particularly concerning finite groups and their representations. It provides a way to classify irreducible representations of a finite group with respect to their behavior under certain types of symmetry. In more specific terms, the Frobenius–Schur indicator is defined for an irreducible representation of a finite group \( G \) over a field \( K \) (typically, the complex numbers).