Existence and construction of \(\Delta_1\)-splines of class \(C^k\) on a three-directional mesh (Q5934366)

Let \(\tau^*\) be the equilateral triangulation of the plane and let \(\Delta _{1}^{ *}\) be the equilateral triangle formed by four triangles of \(\tau^*\). We study the space of piecewise polynomial functions in \(C^{k}\left( R^{2} \right)\) with support \(\Delta _{1}^{ *}\), having a sufficiently high degree \(n\) and which are invariant with respect to the group symmetries of \(\Delta _{1}^{ *}\). Such splines are called \(\Delta_{1}^{ *}\)-splines. We first compute the dimension of this space as the function of \(n\) and \(k\). Then, for any fixed \(k \geq 0\), we prove the existence of \(\Delta _{1}^{ *}\)-splines of class \(C^{k}\) and minimal degree, but these splines are not unique. Finally, we describe an algorithm computing the Bernstein-Bézier coefficients of these splines.