Polynomial splines of non-uniform degree on triangulations: combinatorial bounds on the dimension (Q2010348)

The authors study the dimension of the space of splines (or piecewise polynomial functions) defined on triangulations of a planar domain such that the maximum degree of the polynomial pieces differs across the distinct triangles of the partition. This type of splines are called \textit{non-uniform degree splines}. The approach used in the paper follows the algebraic methods introduced in [\textit{L. J. Billera}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 310, No. 1, 325--340 (1988; Zbl 0718.41017)] and further explored in the case of splines on triangulations in [\textit{H. Schenck}, Adv. Appl. Math. 19, No. 2, 183--199 (1997; Zbl 0901.13013)], [\textit{A. V. Geramita} and \textit{H. K. Schenck}, J. Algebra 204, No. 1, 116--128 (1998; Zbl 0934.13013)] and [\textit{B. Mourrain} and \textit{N. Villamizar}, J. Symb. Comput. 50, 564--577 (2013; Zbl 1370.41020)]. Focusing on the setting of degree adaptive splines on triangulations, the authors present combinatorial upper and lower bounds on the dimension of non-uniform degree spline spaces. Additionally, they show that these bounds lead to the exact dimension of the spline space when the polynomial degrees are sufficiently large.