Cubature over the sphere in Sobolev spaces of arbitrary order

This paper studies numerical integration (or cubature) over the unit sphere for functions in arbitrary Sobolev spaces H^s(S²), s>1. We discuss sequences of cubature rules, where (i) the rule Q_m(n) uses m(n) points and is assumed to integrate exactly all (spherical) polynomials of degree ≤n and (ii) the sequence (Q_m(n)) satisfies a certain local regularity property. This local regularity property is automatically satisfied if each Q_m(n) has positive weights. It is shown that for functions in the unit ball of the Sobolev space H^s(S²), s>1, the worst-case cubature error has the order of convergence O(n^-s), a result previously known only for the particular case . The crucial step in the extension to general s>1 is a novel representation of , where P_ℓ is the Legendre polynomial of degree ℓ, in which the dominant term is a polynomial of degree n, which is therefore integrated exactly by the rule Q_m(n). The order of convergence O(n^-s) is optimal for sequences (Q_m(n)) of cubature rules with properties (i) and (ii) if Q_m(n) uses m(n)=O(n²) points.