On Multivariate Interpolation Peter J. Olver† School of Mathematics University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455 U.S.A.
[email protected] http://www.math.umn.edu/∼olver Abstract. A new approach to interpolation theory for functions of several variables is proposed. We develop a multivariate divided difference calculus based on the theory of non-commutative quasi-determinants. In addition, intriguing explicit formulae that connect the classical finite difference interpolation coefficients for univariate curves with multivariate interpolation coefficients for higher dimensional submanifolds are established. † Supported in part by NSF Grant DMS 11–08894. April 6, 2016 1 1. Introduction. Interpolation theory for functions of a single variable has a long and distinguished his- tory, dating back to Newton’s fundamental interpolation formula and the classical calculus of finite differences, [7, 47, 58, 64]. Standard numerical approximations to derivatives and many numerical integration methods for differential equations are based on the finite dif- ference calculus. However, historically, no comparable calculus was developed for functions of more than one variable. If one looks up multivariate interpolation in the classical books, one is essentially restricted to rectangular, or, slightly more generally, separable grids, over which the formulae are a simple adaptation of the univariate divided difference calculus. See [19] for historical details. Starting with G. Birkhoff, [2] (who was, coincidentally, my thesis advisor), recent years have seen a renewed level of interest in multivariate interpolation among both pure and applied researchers; see [18] for a fairly recent survey containing an extensive bibli- ography. De Boor and Ron, [8, 12, 13], and Sauer and Xu, [61, 10, 65], have systemati- cally studied the polynomial case.