Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / ii / Paper 2 / 19I / a

By character orthogonality, the squared multiplicities are the character inner product norm of the restriction of a character:Since $\chi$ is an irreducible character, its norm on $G$ is one, and henceThe omitted summands are nonnegative, so the character restriction norm bound is an equality precisely when