Association Schemes with at Most Two Nonlinear Irreducible Characters and Applications to Finite Groups

An irreducible character χ of an association scheme is called nonlinear if the multiplicity of χ is greater than 1. The main result of this paper gives a characterization of commutative association schemes with at most two nonlinear irreducible characters. This yields a characterization of finite groups with at most two nonlinear irreducible characters. A class of noncommutative association schemes with at most two nonlinear irreducible character is also given.