A Duchon framework for the sphere (Q1876663)

The paper is motivated by finding error bounds for radial basis functions interpolation in the case when the data points lie on the surface \(S^{d-1}\) of the unit ball of the Euclidean space \({\mathbb R}^d\). For a given \(z \in S^{d-1}\) and \(\theta \in (0,2\pi]\), let \(G(z, \theta)\) denote the set of all points \(\zeta \in S^{d-1}\) whose geodesic distance from \(z\) is \(<\theta\). The authors study relations, in terms of appropriate Sobolev spaces \(W_2^\beta\), between the local and global smoothness of functions \(f \in S^{d-1}\to {\mathbb R}\). They show that for every \(\theta\) it is possible to cover \(S^{d-1}\) with a finite collection of geodesic balls \(G_i=G(z_i, \theta)\), each of the same radius \(\theta\), so that for every \(f \in W_2^\beta(S^{d-1})\) one has \[ \sum_{G_i} \| f | _{G_i}\| ^2_{W_2^\beta (G_i)} \leq Q \| f\| ^2_{W_2^\beta (S^{d-1})}\;, \] where the constant \(Q\) is independent of \(\theta\). The second purpose of the paper is to construct a bounded linear extension operator from \(W_2^\beta (G(z, \theta))\) to \(W_2^\beta (S^{d-1})\). It is shown that the norm of such an operator necessarily depends on \(\theta\). However the dependence on \(\theta\) can be eliminated if one takes only those functions \(f \in W_2^\beta (G(z, \theta))\) that vanish on a certain finite subset of \(G(z, \theta)\).