Superconvergence of kernel-based interpolation

From spline theory it is well-known that univariate cubic spline interpolation, if carried out in its natural Hilbert space W 2 2 [ a , b ] and on point sets with fill distance h , converges only like O ( h 2 ) in L 2 [ a , b ] if no additional assumptions are made. But superconvergence up to order h 4 occurs if more smoothness is assumed and if certain additional boundary conditions are satisfied. This phenomenon was generalized in 1999 to multivariate interpolation in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces on domains Ω ⊂ R d for continuous positive definite Fourier-transformable shift-invariant kernels on R d . But the sufficient condition for superconvergence given in 1999 still needs further analysis, because the interplay between smoothness and boundary conditions is not clear at all. Furthermore, if only additional smoothness is assumed, superconvergence is numerically observed in the interior of the domain, but a theoretical foundation still is a challenging open problem. This paper first generalizes the “improved error bounds” of 1999 by an abstract theory that includes the Aubin–Nitsche trick and the known superconvergence results for univariate polynomial splines. Then the paper analyzes what is behind the sufficient conditions for superconvergence. They split into conditions on smoothness and localization, and these are investigated independently. If sufficient smoothness is present, but no additional localization conditions are assumed, it is numerically observed that superconvergence always occurs in the interior of the domain, and some supporting arguments are provided. If smoothness and localization interact in the kernel-based case on R d , weak and strong boundary conditions in terms of pseudodifferential operators occur. A special section on Mercer expansions is added, because Mercer eigenfunctions always satisfy the sufficient conditions for superconvergence. Numerical examples illustrate the theoretical findings.