On filtered polynomial approximation on the sphere

Abstract: This paper considers filtered polynomial approximations on the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^d\subset \mathbb{R}^{d+1}$, obtained by truncating smoothly the Fourier series of an integrable function $f$ with the help of a "filter" $h$, which is a real-valued continuous function on $[0,\infty)$ such that $h(t)=1$ for $t\in[0,1]$ and $h(t)=0$ for $t\ge2$. The resulting "filtered polynomial approximation" (a spherical polynomial of degree $2L-1$) is then made fully discrete by approximating the inner product integrals by an $N$-point cubature rule of suitably high polynomial degree of precision, giving an approximation called "filtered hyperinterpolation". In this paper we require that the filter $h$ and all its derivatives up to $\lfloor\tfrac{d-1}{2}\rfloor$ are absolutely continuous, while its right and left derivatives of order $\lfloor \tfrac{d+1}{2}\rfloor$ exist everywhere and are of bounded variation. Under this assumption we show that for a function $f$ in the Sobolev space $W^s_p(\mathbb{S}^d),\ 1\le p\le \infty$, both approximations are of the optimal order $ L^{-s}$, in the first case for $s>0$ and in the second fully discrete case for $s>d/p$.