Volker Michel

• We introduce a method to construct approximate identities on the 2-sphere which have an optimal localization. This approach can be used to accelerate the calculations of approximations on the 2-sphere essentially with a comparably small increase of the error. The localization measure in the optimization problem includes a weight function which can be chosen under some constraints. For each choice of weight function existence and uniqueness of the optimal kernel are proved as well as the generation of an approximate identity in the bandlimited case. Moreover, the optimally localizing approximate identity for a certain weight function is calculated and numerically tested.