Thinplate Splines on the Sphere

Abstract

In this paper we give explicit closed forms for the semi-reproducing kernels associated with thinplate spline interpolation on the sphere. Polyharmonic or thinplate splines for ${\mathbb R}^d$ were introduced by Duchon and have become a widely used tool in myriad applications. The analogues for ${\mathbb S}^{d-1}$ are the thin plate splines for the sphere. The topic was first discussed by Wahba in the early 1980's, for the ${\mathbb S}^2$ case. Wahba presented the associated semi-reproducing kernels as infinite series. These semi-reproducing kernels play a central role in expressions for the solution of the associated spline interpolation and smoothing problems. The main aims of the current paper are to give a recurrence for the semi-reproducing kernels, and also to use the recurrence to obtain explicit closed form expressions for many of these kernels. The closed form expressions will in many cases be significantly faster to evaluate than the series expansions. This will enhance the practicality of using these thinplate splines for the sphere in computations.