Interpolation and approximation on the unit disc by complex harmonic splines (Q1070139)

In an earlier paper \textit{J. H. Ahlberg} [Approx. Special Emphasis Spline Functions Proc. Sympos. Univ. Wisconsin, Madison 1969, 1-27 (1969; Zbl 0274.30031)] has used analytic splines to approximate an analytic function on the unit disc, but these approximants only converge uniformly on compact subsets of the open disc. In the present paper the author uses complex harmonic splines in interpolation and approximation on the unit disc. These splines are obtained by using the Poisson integral, with an interpolating or pseudo- interpolating complex spline as the boundary function. The complex harmonic splines converge uniformly on the closed unit disc to the analytic function. The author proves that in case the mesh size is sufficiently small then the approximating function conserve many of the properties of the function being approximated. By an example it is illustrated that the complex harmonic spline approximates conformal maps in a satisfactory manner. On the other hand, a complex harmonic spline only consists of elementary functions.