Hal Schenck

Hal Schenck

This survey gives an overview of several fundamental algebraic constructions which arise in the study of splines. Splines play a key role in approximation theory, geometric modeling, and numerical analysis, their properties depend on combinatorics, topology, and geometry of a simplicial or polyhedral subdivision of a region in R^k, and are often quite subtle. We describe four algebraic techniques which are useful in the study of splines: homology, graded algebra, localization, and inverse systems. Our goal is to give a hands-on introduction to the methods, and illustrate them with concrete examples in the context of splines. We highlight progress made with these methods, such as a formula for the third coefficient of the polynomial giving the dimension of the spline space in high degree, much of which builds on pioneering work of Schumaker, Alfeld-Schumaker, and Billera. The objects appearing here may be computed using the Macaulay2 software system.

Eliana Duarte, Hal Schenck

Let U be a basepoint free four-dimensional subpace of the space of sections of bidegree (a,b) on X = P^1 x P^1, with a and b at least 2. The sections corresponding to U determine a regular map from X to P^3. We show that there can be at most one linear syzygy on the associated bigraded ideal I_U in the bigraded ring k[s,t;u,v]. Existence of a linear syzygy, coupled with the assumption that U is basepoint free, implies the existence of an additional "special pair" of minimal first syzygies. Using results of Botbol, we show that these three syzygies are sufficient to determine the implicit equation of the image of X in P^3; we also show that the singular locus must contain a line.

Hal Schenck, Tatyana Sorokina

A standard construction in approximation theory is mesh refinement. For a simplicial or polyhedral mesh D in R^k, we study the subdivision D' obtained by subdividing a maximal cell of D. We give sufficient conditions for the module of splines on D' to split as the direct sum of splines on D and splines on the subdivided cell. As a consequence, we obtain dimension formulas and explicit bases for several commonly used subdivisions and their multivariate generalizations.

Nathan Fieldsteel, Hal Schenck

Geometrically characterized (GC) sets were introduced by Chung-Yao in their work on polynomial interpolation in R^d. Conjectures on the structure of GC sets have been proposed by Gasca-Maeztu for the planar case, and in higher dimension by de Boor and Apozyan-Hakopian. We investigate GC sets in dimension three or more, and show that one way to obtain such sets is from the combinatorics of simplicial complexes.