This book collects all material developed by the Geomathematics Group, TU Kaiserslautern, during the few last years to set up a theory of spherical functions of mathematical (geo-)physics. The work shows a twofold transition: first, the natural transition from the scalar to the vectorial and tensorial theory of spherical harmonics is given in coordinate-free representation, based on new variants of the addition theorem and the Funk-Hecke formulas. Second, the canonical transition from spherical harmonics via zonal (kernel) functions to the Dirac kernel is presented in close orientation to an...

This book presents in a consistent and unified overview results and developments in the field of today's spehrical sampling particularly arising in mathematical geosciences.