Covering numbers for characters of symmetric groups

Abstract

If $n>4$ and $c(\theta)$ denotes the set of irreducible constituents of a character $\theta$, then $c(\chi^k)={\rm Irr}(S_n)$ for all nonlinear $\chi\in {\rm Irr}(S_n)$ if and only if $k\geq n-1$.