The Earth Gravity Model 2008 (EGM2008) is now some years old, and yet information on how to use it to calculate Earth's gravity remains obscure outside the field of geodesy. We describe the mathematics necessary to implement EGM2008, and use this to discuss several points of the model: its sensitivity to the number of spherical harmonics being summed, nuances and a trap for physicists and mathematicians in the normalisation it uses, and a comparison with other work. We conclude that one must not overestimate the precision shown by a global-fit model such as EGM2008.

Missions to asteroids have been the trend in space exploration for the last years. They provide information about the formation and evolution of the Solar System, contribute to direct planetary defense tasks, and could be potentially exploited for resource mining. Be their purpose as it may, the factor that all these mission types have in common is the challenging dynamical environment they have to deal with. The gravitational environment of a certain asteroid is most of the times not accurately known until very late mission phases when the spacecraft has already orbited the body for some time.

Shape models help to estimate the gravitational potential with a density distribution assumption (usually constant value) and some optical measurements of the body. These measurements, unlike the ones needed for harmonic coefficient estimation, can be taken from well before arriving at the asteroid’s sphere of influence, which allows to obtain a better approximation of the gravitational dynamics much sooner. The disadvantage they pose is that obtaining acceleration values from these models implies a heavy computational burden on the on-board processing unit, which is very often too time-consuming for the mission profile.

In this paper, the technique developed on [1] is used to create a validated Python-based tool that obtains spherical harmonic coefficients from the shape model of an asteroid or comet, given a certain density for the body. This validated software suite, called AstroHarm, is used to analyse the accuracy of the models obtained and the improvements in computational efficiency in a simulated spacecraft orbiting a small body.

The results obtained are shown offering a qualitative comparison between different order spherical harmonic models and the original shape model. Finally, the creation of a catalogue for harmonics is proposed together with some thoughts on complex modelling using this tool.

We study inversion of the spherical Radon transform with centres on a sphere (the data acquisition set). Such inversions are essential in various image reconstruction problems arising in medical, radar and sonar imaging. In the case of radially incomplete data, we show that the spherical Radon transform can be uniquely inverted recovering the image function in spherical shells. Our result is valid when the support of the image function is inside the data acquisition sphere, outside that sphere, as well as on both sides of the sphere. Furthermore, in addition to the uniqueness result, our method of proof provides reconstruction formulas for all those cases. We present a robust computational algorithm and demonstrate its accuracy and efficiency on several numerical examples.

This paper deals with the Schrödinger equation $i{\partial }_{s} u(\mathbf{z} , t; s)- \mathcal{L} u(\mathbf{z} , t; s)= 0, $ where $ \mathcal{L} $ is the sub-Laplacian on the Heisenberg group. Assume that the initial data $f$ satisfies $\vert f(\mathbf{z} , t)\vert \lesssim {q}_{\alpha } (\mathbf{z} , t), $ where ${q}_{s} $ is the heat kernel associated to $ \mathcal{L} . $ If in addition $\vert u(\mathbf{z} , t; {s}_{0} )\vert \lesssim {q}_{\beta } (\mathbf{z} , t), $ for some ${s}_{0} \in \mathbb{R} \setminus \{ 0\} , $ then we prove that $u(\mathbf{z} , t; s)= 0$ for all $s\in \mathbb{R} $ whenever $\alpha \beta \lt { s}_{0}^{2} . $ This result holds true in the more general context of $H$-type groups. We also prove an analogous result for the Grushin operator on ${ \mathbb{R} }^{n+ 1} . $

We prove upper bounds for Hecke–Laplace eigenfunctions on certain Riemannian manifolds $X$ of arithmetic type, uniformly in the eigenvalue and the volume of the manifold. The manifolds under consideration are $d$-fold products of $2$-spheres or $3$-spheres, realized as adelic quotients of quaternion algebras over totally real number fields. In the volume aspect we prove a (‘Weyl-type’) saving of $\mathrm{vol} \hspace{0.167em} (X)^{- 1/ 6+ \varepsilon } $.

In the spectral solution of 3-D Poisson equations in cylindrical and spherical coordinates including the axis or the center, it is convenient to employ radial basis functions that depend on the Fourier wavenumber or on the latitudinal mode. This idea has been adopted by Matsushima and Marcus and by Verkley for planar problems and pursued by the present authors for spherical ones. For the Dirichlet boundary value problem in both geometries, original bases have been introduced built upon Jacobi polynomials which lead to a purely diagonal representation of the radial second-order differential operator of all spectral modes. This note details the origin of such a diagonalization which extends to cylindrical and spherical regions the properties of the Legendre basis introduced by Jie Shen for Cartesian domains. Closed form expressions are derived for the diagonal elements of the stiffness matrices as well as for the elements of the tridiagonal mass matrices occurring in evolutionary problems. Furthermore, the bound on the condition number of the spectral matrices associated with the Helmholtz equation are determined, proving in a rigorous way one of the main advantages of the proposed radial bases.

Use of the International Geomagnetic Reference Field Model (IGRF) to construct magnetic anomaly maps can lead to problems with the accurate determination of magnetic anomalies that are readily apparent at the edges of local or regional magnetic surveys carried out at different epochs. The situation is severe in areas like Antarctica, where ionospheric activity is intense and only a few ground magnetic observatories exist. This makes it difficult to properly separate from ionospheric variations the secular variation of the core magnetic field. We examine two alternatives to the piecewise-continuous IGRF core magnetic field in Antarctica for the last 45 years: the present global Comprehensive Model (CM4) and the new version of the Antarctic Reference Model (ARM). Both these continuous models are better at representing the secular variation in Antarctica than the IGRF. Therefore, their use is recommended for defining the crustal magnetic field of Antarctica (e.g. the next generation of the Antarctic Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map).

Let be the mean normal measure of a stationary random set Z in the extended convex ring in ℝd. For k ∈ {1,…,d-1}, connections are shown between and the mean of . Here, the mean is understood to be with respect to the random isotropic k-dimensional linear subspace ξk and the mean normal measure of the intersection is computed in ξk. This mean to be well defined, a suitable spherical lifting must be applied to before averaging. A large class of liftings and their resulting means are discussed. In particular, a geometrically motivated lifting is presented, for which the mean of liftings of determines uniquely for any fixed k ∈ {2,…,d-1}.

The paper yields retrieval formulae of the directional distribution of a stationary k-flat process in ℝd if its rose of intersections with all r-flats is known. Cases k = d −1, 1 ≤ r ≤ d - 1 for arbitrary d and d = 4, k = 2, r = 2 are considered. Some generalizations to manifold processes in ℝd are made. The proofs use the methods of harmonic analysis on higher Grassmannians (spherical harmonics, integral transforms).

Useful approximations have been developed along the years to predict the precision of systematic sampling for measurable functions of a bounded support in ℝd. Recently, the theory of systematic sampling on ℝ has received a thrust. In geometric sampling, design based unbiased estimators exist, however, which imply systematic sampling on the circle (𝕊1) and the semicircle (ℍ1); the planimeter estimator of an area, or the Buffon-Steinhaus estimator of curve length in the plane constitute popular examples. Over the last two decades, many other estimators of geometric measures have been obtained which imply systematic sampling also on the sphere (𝕊2). In this paper we adapt the theory available for non-periodic functions of bounded support on ℝ to periodic functions, and thereby to 𝕊1 and ℍ1, and we obtain new estimators of the corresponding variance approximations. Further we consider - we believe for the first time - the problem of predicting the precision of systematic sampling in 𝕊2. The paper starts with a historical perspective, and ends with suggestions for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel proof of a well-known relationship between functions in harmonic subspaces of L2(Rn) ∪ L1 (Rn) and their Fourier transforms. The proof uses a characterisation of spherical harmonics given by Hecke and a method developed by the author in a previous paper.