Willi Freeden, T. Gervens, Michael Schreiner

• In this paper, we deal with the problem of spherical interpolation of discretely given data of tensorial type. To this end, spherical tensor fields are investigated and a decomposition formula is described. Tensor spherical harmonics are introduced as eigenfunctions of a tensorial analogon to the Beltrami operator and discussed in detail. Based on these preliminaries, a spline interpolation process is described and error estimates are presented. Furthermore, some relations between the spline basis functions and the theory of radial basis functions are developed.