Isotropic positive definite functions on spheres (Q2243167)

Positive definite functions play important roles in many applications, like scatter interpretation, kernel method and spatial statistics.Therefore the concern of construction proper positive definite functions has been attracting interest. In the past, such a problem has been extensively studied for the case of the Euclidean space \(\mathbb{R}^d\). The well-known Bochner's criterion states that a continuous function is isotropic positive definite on \(\mathbb{R}^d\) if and only if it can be the Fourier transform of a nonnegative finite-valued Borel measure on \(\mathbb{R}^d\). In this paper the authors investigate the relationship between positive definite functions on the unit sphere \(\mathbb{S}^d\) and on the euclidean space. For odd dimension, they develop a new technique to establish the inheritance of positive (semi) definite property from \(\mathbb{R}^d\) to \(\mathbb{S}^d\) and the converse. The results presented can verify a conjecture proposed by R. K. Beatson, W. zu Castell, Y. Xu and a sharp Pólya type criterion for positive definite functions on sphere.