A simple proof of the uncertainty principle for compact groups (Q2486126)

For a finite group \(G\) the authors prove the inequality \[ |\text{supp}(f)|\sum n^2_i\geq |G|, \] where the summation is taken over all irreducible unitary representations of degree \(n_i\) which belong to the support of the Fourier transform \(f^\wedge\) of \(f\) on \(G^\wedge\). Of course \(|\text{supp}(f)|\) denotes the number of elements in the support of \(f\). The short proof makes use of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and the Parseval identity. Since all of the irreducible representations of a compact group are finite-dimensional, the same proof applies to compact groups where \(|G|\) is taken to mean Haar measure normalized to one.