Spherical cubature formulas in Sobolev spaces (Q2400732)

Let \(S_{n-1}\subset {\mathbb R}^n\), \(n\geq 2\), be the unit sphere. Assume that \(\varphi\) belongs to the Sobolev space \(H^s(S_{n-1})\), \(s>(n-1)/2\). The author investigates spherical cubature formulas \[ \sum_{j=1}^N c_j\, \varphi(\theta_j) \] for the spherical mean of \(\varphi\) over \(S_{n-1}\), where \(\theta_j \in S_{n-1}\), \(j=1,\dots,N\), are nodes and where the weights \(c_j\) fulfil \(\sum_{j=1}^N c_j = 1\). Using expansions of spherical harmonics and Gegenbauer polynomials, it is shown that among all of these spherical cubature formulas, there exists exactly one cubature formula with minimal norm of the error. The weights \(c_j\) of the optimal spherical cubature formula are unique solutions of a certain linear system.