Smooth planar $r$-splines of degree $2r$

Abstract

In \cite{as}, Alfeld and Schumaker give a formula for the dimension of the space of piecewise polynomial functions (splines) of degree $d$ and smoothness $r$ on a generic triangulation of a planar simplicial complex $Δ$ (for $d \ge 3r+1$) and any triangulation (for $d\geq 3r+2$). In \cite{ss}, it was conjectured that the Alfeld-Schumaker formula actually holds for all $d \ge 2r+1$. In this note, we show that this is the best result possible; in particular, there exists a simplicial complex $Δ$ such that for any $r$, the dimension of the spline space in degree $d=2r$ is not given by the formula of \cite{as}. The proof relies on the explicit computation of the nonvanishing of the first local cohomology module described in \cite{ss2}.