Approximation power of RBFs and their associated SBFs: a connection (Q996792)

This paper deals with the restriction of a radial basis function (RBF), which are radial, conditionally positive definite functions on \({\mathbb R}^{n+1}\), to the unit sphere \(S^n\). Let \(\Phi\) be an RBF. For \(x,\,y\in S^n\), one has \(| x-y| = (2-2x\cdot y)^{1/2}\), where \(| \cdot| \) denotes the Euclidean norm. Then the associated spherical basis function (SBF) \(\phi\) is defined by \(\phi(x\cdot y):= \Phi(x-y)\) for \(x, y\in S^n\). First the authors strengthen a result of \textit{F. J. Narcowich} and \textit{J. D. Ward} [SIAM J. Math. Anal. 33, No. 6, 1393--1410 (2002; Zbl 1055.41007)] concerning an explicit representation of the Fourier-Legendre coefficients of the restriction in terms of the Fourier transform of the RBF. For RBFs that are related to completely monotonic functions, the authors derive a new integral representation for these Fourier-Legendre coefficients in terms of the measure generating the completely monotonic function. These representations are utilized to show that if an RBF has a native space equivalent to a Sobolev space \(H_s({\mathbb R}^{n+1})\), then the restriction to \(S^n\) has a native space equivalent to \(H_{s-1/2}(S^n)\). Further, these representations are used to recover the asymptotic behavior of such Fourier-Legendre coefficients for a wide variety of RBFs.