in case that whenever . In this case, the representation of doesn't provide further information than a usual representation of . But, in case that "it doesn't descend", we can consider a lift to create the map , which is a projective representation of . In effect, for
since :
and then .
Example. Spin representation of .
The group has a representation as complex matrices. And this representation can be used to create a spin-representation of . In some contexts, it is said that that has a spin-1 representation, the orthogonal matrices, and a spin-1/2 representation, the special unitary matrices. Even if we have different lifts from to , all the corresponding spin representations are equivalent (I have read that in Wikipedia)
To think:
Also, to see the relation between the spin representation and the vector representation of : see this.
Example. Spin representation of .
The provides two inequivalent spin-representations for . There are two different lifts from to its double cover , and I guess it can be shown that there is no isomorphism between the resulting spin representations.
To think: