Schur orthogonality relations ($\mathbb{E}{\rho }_{ij}\overline{{\sigma }_{kl}}=d_{\rho }^{-1}{\delta }_{\rho \sigma }{\delta }_{ik}{\delta }_{jl}$)

For inequivalent chosen unitary irreducible representations of a finite group, uniform expectation givesThe Kronecker deltas in the first case refer to entries in the same chosen basis. Averaging an intertwiner and applying the Schur lemma proves the formula; summing diagonal entries gives character orthogonality.

For finite-dimensional unitary representations of a compact group, average the action on $\mathrm{Hom}(W,V)$ against normalized Haar measure. This is the orthogonal projection onto the intertwining operators, and its trace is the displayed integral. The Schur lemma therefore makes distinct irreducible characters orthogonal and each irreducible character of norm one.

For chosen inequivalent unitary irreducible representations $\rho ,\sigma$ of a finite group and a $d_{\rho }\times d_{\sigma }$ matrix $M$, the average ${\mathbb{E}}_x\rho (x)M\sigma (x{)}^{\ast }$ is zero when $\rho \ne \sigma$. For $\rho =\sigma$, it is $(\mathrm{tr}M/d_{\rho })I$. This follows from the Schur lemma, since the average intertwines the two group representations. Equivalent representations in different bases require the corresponding intertwiner; the identity-matrix formula assumes literally the same representative.