A representation problem for smooth sums of ridge functions (Q783716)

Suppose that a function \(f:\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}\) can be represented in the form \[ f(\mathbf{x})=\sum_{i=1}^k f_i(\mathbf{a}^i\cdot \mathbf{x})\tag{*} \] where the \(\mathbf{a}^i\), \(i=1,\dots,k\), are pairwise linear independent vectors of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) and \(\mathbf{a}^i \cdot \mathbf{x}\) is the inner product. A natural question is about the possibility that smoothness of \(f\) could be transmitted to a decomposition, i.e., if \(f\in \mathcal{C}^s(\mathbb{R}^n)\), \(s\ge 0\), satisfies (*), do there exist \(g_i\in \mathcal{C}^s(\mathbb{R})\) such that \[ f(\mathbf{x})=\sum_{i=1}^k g_i(\mathbf{a}^i\cdot \mathbf{x})? \] Using the theory of polynomial functions, the authors prove that if \(f\in \mathcal{C}^s(\mathbb{R}^n)\) and (*) holds, then there exist functions \(g_i\in \mathcal{C}^s(\mathbb{R})\), \(i=1,\dots,k\), and a polynomial \(P(\mathbf{x})\) of degree at most \(k-1\), such that \[ f(\mathbf{x})=\sum_{i=1}^k g_i(\mathbf{a}^i \cdot \mathbf{x})+P(\mathbf{x}). \] Moreover, if there is a nonsingular linear transformation \(T:\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^n\) such that \(T\mathbf{a}^i \in \mathbb{Q}^n\), \(i=1,\dots,k\), then we can choose the functions \(g_i\) such that \(P\equiv 0\).