Optimal Point Sets for Total Degree Polynomial Interpolation in Moderate Dimensions

This paper is concerned with Lagrange interpolation by total degree polynomials in moderate dimensions. In particular, we are interested in characterising the optimal choice of points for the interpolation problem, where we define the optimal interpolation points as those which minimise the Lebesgue constant. We give a novel algorithm for numerically computing the location of the optimal points, which is independent of the shape of the domain and does not require computations with Vandermonde matrices. We perform a numerical study of the growth of the minimal Lebesgue constant with respect to the degree of the polynomials and the dimension, and report the lowest values known as yet of the Lebesgue constant in the unit cube and the unit ball in up to 10 dimensions.