Generalized discrete spherical harmonic transforms (Q1976831)

The authors generalize spherical harmonic transforms to an arbitrary distribution of latitudinal points. Further, they develop a variant of the Legendre transform based on functions which are linear combinations (rotations) of associated Legendre functions \(P^n_m\). On a grid with \(N\) latitudes this basis requires only \({\mathcal O}(N^2)\) memory compared to the usual \({\mathcal O}(N^3)\). Based on the new transforms the authors suggest a faster projection method (which still remains \({\mathcal O}(N^3)\)). Computational results are presented.