How good can polynomial interpolation on the sphere be? (Q5950881)

The paper deals with polynomial interpolation over the sphere \(S^2 \subset \mathbb{R} ^3\). The authors study the question of investigating the closeness of the rate of growth of the norm of the interpolation operator by a judicious choice of interpolation points, to the optimal order achieved by orthogonal projection and hyperinterpolation (see \textit{I. H. Sloan}, J. Approximation Theory 83, No. 2, 238-254 (1995; Zbl 0839.41006)). The main focus of the paper is on the numerical results obtained by computational optimization, rather than on the optimization techniques themselves. Numerical results on uniform errors for approximating a set of test functions, by both interpolation and hyperinterpolation, as well as by non--polynomial interpolation with certain global basis function have also been presented.