A Novel Galerkin Method for Solving PDEs on the Sphere Using Highly Localized Kernel Bases

Abstract

We present a novel Galerkin method for solving partial differential equations on the sphere. The problem is discretized by a highly localized basis which is easily constructed. The stiffness matrix entries are computed by a recently developed quadrature formula unique to the localized bases we consider. We present error estimates and investigate the stability of the discrete stiffness matrix. Implementation and numerical experiments are discussed.