An overlapping additive Schwarz preconditioner for interpolation on the unit sphere with spherical radial basis functions (Q708316)

Radial basis functions provide excellent methods for the approximation of multivariable functions in Euclidean spaces and on spheres. The latter context has important applications in science and e.g. meteorology. One important problem that arises when radial basis function methods are used with the standard choices of radial basis functions is that of ill-conditioned interpolation matrices. Therefore special numerical schemes including preconditioning methods have been developed to overcome this problem. This article deals with a particular choice of preconditioning, namely the so-called Schwarz preconditioner, with the specific application on the sphere. The ill-conditioning and the condition numbers of the mentioned interpolation matrices receive particular attention. The paper includes concrete numerical algorithms and examples.