Hermite-Birkhoff Interpolation on Arbitrarily Distributed Data on the Sphere and Other Manifolds

Abstract: We consider the problem of interpolating a function given on scattered points using Hermite-Birkhoff formulas on the sphere and other manifolds. We express each proposed interpolant as a linear combination of basis functions, the combination coefficients being incomplete Taylor expansions of the interpolated function at the interpolation points. The basis functions have the following features: (i) depend on the geodesic distance; (ii) are orthonormal with respect to the point-evaluation functionals; and (iii) have all derivatives equal zero up to a certain order at the interpolation points. Moreover, the construction of such interpolants, which belong to the class of partition of unity methods, takes advantage of not requiring any solution of linear systems.