Character projection operator ($P_{\lambda }=\frac{d_{\lambda }}{|G|}{\sum }_{g\in G}{\chi }_{\lambda }(g{)}^{\ast }U(g)$)

For a finite group $G$ represented unitarily by $U(g)$, the central projector onto the isotypic subspace of an irreducible representation $\lambda$ is $P_{\lambda }=(d_{\lambda }/|G|){\sum }_g{\chi }_{\lambda }(g{)}^{\ast }U(g)$, where $d_{\lambda }$ is its dimension. Character orthogonality implies that the operator is identity on copies of $\lambda$ and zero on other irreducibles. For a one-dimensional irreducible, applying it to an atomic orbital gives either zero or a symmetry-adapted linear combination of that symmetry, to be normalized afterward. A multidimensional central projector selects an entire isotypic component rather than one uniquely chosen component function.