Degeneracy in WT-spaces (Q795251)

The author undertakes a qualitative investigation into the structure of elements in the linear span of a weak Chebyshev system, unifying and extending work in the same spirit by Stockenberg, Zalik, Zielke and others. After introducing some basic notions about WT-spaces, the author identifies several conditions under which one may conclude that a WT- space is in fact a T-space, i.e. is spanned by a Chebyshev system. He then proves a result concerning the number of zeros of elements in a WT- space that contains a T-space of lower dimension. This has applications to splines and in the theory of n-convex functions. In another section the interplay between degeneracy, vanishing points and the existence of positive functions is examined. He shows, for example, that under certain conditions a WT-system can be factored into a T-system and a non-negative function whose zeros are the vanishing points of the space spanned by the WT-system.