Vectorial Slepian Functions on the Ball

Abstract: Due to the uncertainty principle, a function cannot be simultaneously limited in space as well as in frequency. The idea of Slepian functions in general is to find functions that are at least optimally spatio-spectrally localised. Here, we are looking for Slepian functions which are suitable for the representation of real-valued vector fields on a three-dimensional ball. We work with diverse vectorial bases on the ball which all consist of Jacobi polynomials and vector spherical harmonics. Such basis functions occur in the singular value decomposition of some tomographic inverse problems in geophysics and medical imaging, see [V. Michel and S. Orzlowski. On the Null Space of a Class of Fredholm Integral Equations of the First Kind. Journal of Inverse and Ill-posed Problems, 24:687-710, 2016.]. Our aim is to find bandlimited vector fields that are well-localised in a part of a cone whose apex is situated in the origin. Following the original approach towards Slepian functions, the optimisation problem can be transformed into a finite-dimensional algebraic eigenvalue problem. The entries of the corresponding matrix are treated analytically as far as possible. For the remaining integrals, numerical quadrature formulae have to be applied. The eigenvalue problem decouples into a normal and a tangential problem. The number of well-localised vector fields can be estimated by a Shannon number which mainly depends on the maximal radial and angular degree of the basis functions as well as the size of the localisation region. We show numerical examples of vectorial Slepian functions on the ball, which demonstrate the good localisation of these functions and the accurate estimate of the Shannon number.